Assessment of the Regulatory and Institutional Framework for Agricultural Gene Editing via CRISPR-based Technologies in Latin America and the Caribbean

Genome editing tools have promised tremendous opportunities in agriculture for breeding crops and livestock across the food supply chain. Potentially addressing issues associated with a growing global population, sustainability concerns, and possibly helping address the effects of climate change (Kuiken, Barrangou, and Grieger 2021). These promises come alongside environmental, cultural, and socio-economic risks. Including concerns that governance systems are not keeping pace with technological developments and are ill-equipped, or not well suited to evaluate risks new genome editing tools may introduce. Understanding these complex, dynamic interactions across the LAC region is important to inform appropriate and acceptable regional governance and investment strategies. The power and promise of gene editing, CRISPR specifically, were first realized with the discovery of CRISPR loci in the 1980s (Anzalone, Koblan, and Liu 2020). Since that time, CRISPR-Cas systems have been further developed enabling genome editing in virtually all organisms across the tree of life (Anzalone, Koblan, and Liu 2020). Gene editing is not a singular technology or technique; it refers most often to a set of techniques that enable the manipulation of a genome with greater precision than previous iterations of genetic engineering (Shukla-Jones, Friedrichs, and Winickoff 2018b). The Inter-American Development Bank partnered with North Carolina State Universitys Genetic Engineering and Society (GES) Center to assess the regulatory and institutional frameworks surrounding gene-editing via CRISPR-based technologies in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) regions. The project studied the following core components: Current Policy Evaluation: Understanding what the future may hold requires a critical examination of the current status of the regulatory landscape. Analysis of the existing regulatory systems for agricultural biotechnologies throughout Latin America and how they included consideratio