Bio­mElix One is a first-of-its-kind feed addi­tive that is an exam­ple of the lat­ter approach. It works by load­ing into bac­te­ria CRISPR gene-cut­ting instruc­tions that are locat­ed on cir­cu­lar bits of repli­cat­ing DNA called plas­mids. These plas­mids are then active­ly spread through the bac­te­r­i­al com­mu­ni­ties nat­u­ral­ly liv­ing in chick­en’s guts — pass­ing them from bac­te­r­i­al cell to cell, across the many dif­fer­ent bac­te­r­i­al species liv­ing there. When these engi­neered plas­mids enter Sal­mo­nel­la bac­te­ria, they cut their chro­mo­so­mal DNA and kill it. In every oth­er species the plas­mid trans­fers to, the same intro­duced DNA cut­ting mech­a­nism remains active, but it is not expect­ed to be effec­tive in actu­al­ly cut­ting chro­mo­somes — how­ev­er, each plas­mid trans­fer itself still cre­ates a new, liv­ing genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­ism. 

Lumi­na — a genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied mouth bac­teri­um designed to spread and per­ma­nent­ly colonise the human mouth is already being sold com­mer­cial­ly. The pro­duc­er of this high-risk GM microbe has tak­en great lengths to avoid scruti­ny by reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ties.

Brus­sels, 19 Decem­ber 2025 – A qual­i­fied major­i­ty of EU Mem­ber States today backed the dereg­u­la­tion of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied (GM) plants pro­duced using so-called new genom­ic tech­niques (NGTs). Aus­tria, Bel­gium, Bul­gar­ia, Croa­t­ia, Ger­many, Hun­gary, Roma­nia, Slo­va­kia, and Slove­nia did not indi­cate sup­port dur­ing this morning’s meet­ing of the Com­mit­tee of Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (COREPER) in Brus­sels.