Acceptance
of a new technology is not the issue. In the past
50 years, consumers have experienced the benefits of
conventional breeding based on biotechnological tools.
However, growing food needs cannot be sustained by traditional
breeding. Genome-editing technologies have the
potential to offer the consumer products that would be
difficult, or impossible to produce using traditional breeding
methods, without the addition of foreign DNA typical of
traditional GM (which still generates strong consumer
concerns and objections). These new crop fruits will remain
biotech crops, which is largely acceptable. We suggest the
name of genetically edited (GE) crops for plants created
with gene-editing tools such as ZFNs, TALENs, and
CRISPRs.