The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) 2017 draft guidance that proposed drug-like regulatory scrutiny of food animals produced using gene editing technology such as CRISPR has global implications for the future cost and feasibility of food animal production. This regulatory proposal fails to recognize that the same genetic changes could be achieved using conventional breeding techniques instead of newer molecular methods, and does not consider whether or not the changes are novel or present any hazards, as is clearly explained in a timely and insightful commentary published in The CRISPR Journal.