Genome editing is a promising form of biotechnology, enabling targeted changes in animals, making them more suitable for human purposes, and better adapted to climate change. Regulation of an editing technology such as the CRISPR system has mainly concerned risk assessments, largely neglecting so-called non-safety issues: Are the products sustainable over time, how they will affect society, and are they ethically sound? The social and ethical potentials and challenges of genome-edited animals should be discussed before production.

The primary research question for the CRISPRWELL project is: What are the conditions for sustainable, ethically, and socially acceptable use of genome editing on animals that should inform non-safety assessment in regulatory practice? 

The project work includes:

• Mapping of the existing regulatory and technological landscape for genome editing in animals to identify the main trends in technological research and regulatory discussions.
• Qualitative exploration of citizen and stakeholder views on the sustainability and moral acceptability of different forms of genome editing of animals – in the lab, the farm, and the wild – using interviews and focus group studies.
• Analysis of the sustainability of different kinds of genome editing in animals, and analysis based on a virtue-ethical approach developed as part of the project will follow. Combined, this will be useful in assessments of which cases of genome editing of animals can be beneficial and justified, together with a contribution to the public debate on the use of this technology.

The research group includes people from biotechnology, philosophy, sociology, and law that will work together to create a framework for assessments of genome editing of animals from these perspectives.