The GMO Act

The South African Regulator has concluded that New Breeding Techniques (NBTs, including Genome Editing) fall within the scope of the existing GMO regulatory framework. Based on the definition of a GMO in the GMO Act, the Executive Council concluded that the same risk-assessment and approval processes used for GMOs apply to NBT-derived organisms and products. As a result, revised application templates for contained use, trial-, and general releases became mandatory from 1 December 2021.