ALIGN-Projekt
ALIGN – Advancing Legal, Innovative, and Governance Networks for NGTs in Plants
New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) are opening up new possibilities for plant breeding, for example by enabling crops to be developed more precisely for changing environmental conditions or reduced input use. At the same time, their use raises legal, ethical and societal questions. ALIGN examines how the new European regulatory framework for NGT plants can be implemented in a way that is legally robust, practically workable and socially responsible.
ALIGN brings together the Chair of Food Law at the University of Bayreuth with the Julius Kühn Institute (JKI), the German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) and the Institute of Technology-Theology-Natural Sciences (TTN) at LMU Munich. Combining legal, scientific, socio-economic and ethical expertise, the consortium addresses questions of transparency, traceability and labelling, freedom of choice and coexistence, as well as patents, access to seeds and possible dependencies along the value chain. Stakeholders from public authorities, plant breeding, conventional and organic agriculture, science and civil society are involved in the research process.
ALIGN aims to develop practical recommendations and guidance for policymakers, authorities and other relevant actors. The project also places strong emphasis on knowledge transfer: an open Knowledge Hub and a podcast series will make the findings accessible to a wider audience and contribute to an informed debate on the future of plant breeding and agriculture.