Tamar Haspel wrote a thoughtful and in-depth article about patents and genetically engineered crops for the Washington Post. One of the questions that often comes up is whether patents are preventing independent research from being conducted on these crops? To help answer the question, Haspel included a description of GENERA!
Monsanto has agreements with more than 100 universities that allow academic scientists to do independent research with no oversight (although those agreements don’t cover plant breeding). That’s one reason why, despite what you might have heard, there have been hundreds of independent studies on genetically engineered organisms. Biology Fortified, an independent nonprofit organization, is cataloging GMO research and is 400 studies into a database that eventually will hold more than 1,000. The database, GENERA, shows that, of those 400, more than half report receiving no industry funding.
We are happy to see this resource being used by journalists, and we hope that it will help people find out more about what science has been done on genetically engineered crops. Read the whole article here.