Lega senator Gian Marco Centinaio, vice president of the Senate and former Italian minister of agricultural, has once again talked about his bill on the "experimentation of organisms produced with site-directed mutagenesis techniques and cisgenesis".

In a video interview for Milan based newpaper Libero, Senator Centinaio illustrated his proposal, focused on genome editing techniques, the targeted correction of a plant DNA sequence through genetic engineering, which, introduced in 2021, earned him the Nobel Prize for chemistry to researchers Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifers Doudna.

"I am satisfied with the decree", comments the parliamentarian, "agriculture needs this technology: it allows plants to evolve faster. Research institutes have been working in this field for years but only in the laboratory: experiments cannot yet be carried out in the field".

"The European Union believes that these searches generate monsters," Centinaio continues, answering a question about Brussels' position. "We are creating a healthy lobby among member states for the EU to allow trials. Otherwise it will happen as usual: we will not keep up with the times and we will have to buy the results of scientific research abroad. I hope that the elected representatives in the next Europeans have a vision oriented towards the future and modern agriculture. We have a Europe - concludes the vice president of the Senate - which says yes to crickets but no to scientific research".