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US National Academies report misses the mark

Nature Biotechnology volume 34, pages 1226–1228 (2016)Cite this article

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To the Editor:

One glaring problem of the report is its failure to acknowledge widespread yield gains in multiple countries arising from better weed control with herbicide-tolerance technology, despite many reliable reports of this in the scientific literature4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11. The report examines yield and farm income effects in chapters 4 and 6, yet fails to refer to, or draw on, important and detailed peer-reviewed literature on the socioeconomic impacts of GE crops and many of the peer-reviewed literature cited therein. These omissions are difficult to understand, given that copies of some of these papers were sent to the NAS committee at an early stage of its review (G. Brookes and P. Barfoot, personal communication).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), Washington, DC, USA

    L Val Giddings

  2. The Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Henry Miller

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  1. L Val Giddings
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Correspondence to L Val Giddings.

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Giddings, L., Miller, H. US National Academies report misses the mark. Nat Biotechnol 34, 1226–1228 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3746

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