An Australian company has bred dairy cows from ‘gene edited’ bulls whose genomes have since been found to unintentionally contain bacterial DNA. The US Food and Drug Administration say this demonstrates the risks posed by these techniques and why they need to be regulated.

However, in Australia the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator is allowing a number of these techniques to be used with no regulation at all. And our food regulator Food Standards Australia New Zealand has proposed regulatory changes that mean milk from these cows could enter our supermarkets with no safety assessment or labelling.