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Rationalizing governance of genetically modified products in developing countries

Nature Biotechnology volume 36, pages 137–139 (2018)Cite this article

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To the Editor:

Ever-more powerful genetic technologies, such as genome-editing endonucleases and marker-assisted breeding, continue to facilitate the development of genetically modified (GM) crops engineered with complex traits, such as, nutritional quality, climatic resilience and stacked disease-tolerance mechanisms. But in many developing countries, the uptake of these GM products is being jeopardized by the sluggish pace and inadequacy of regulatory oversight. This is a serious concern because developing countries stand to benefit most from the adoption of new varieties of staple GM crops, such as vitamin-enhanced rice and bananas or disease-resistant maize and cassava. Despite the availability of the formal risk analysis framework—which provides all the critical components of risk assessment, risk management and risk communication important for structured regulatory decision making on such products—we believe that policymakers do not always understand the underlying factors behind a risk analysis well enough to facilitate implementation of robust and realistic biosafety practices. Here, we argue for a rethink of the way in which capacity development and training is implemented in developing countries for biosafety programs assessing bioengineered products in developing countries.

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Acknowledgements

The themes discussed here are based on those presented in reference 2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Global Environmental Sustainability, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA

    Ademola A Adenle

  2. School of Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    E Jane Morris

  3. University of South Wales, Pontypridd, UK

    Denis J Murphy

  4. Centre for the Study of Science and Innovation Policy (CSIP), University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada

    Peter W B Phillips

  5. Grupo CEO SA, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Eduardo Trigo

  6. Biosafety and Environment Programme, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Paris, France

    Peter Kearns

  7. Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China

    Yun-He Li

  8. Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, St Louis, Missouri, USA

    Hector Quemada

  9. Program for Biosafety Systems Policy, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington, DC, USA

    José Falck-Zepeda

  10. Komen Bioscience Consultancy, Haarlem, Netherlands

    John Komen

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  1. Ademola A Adenle
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  2. E Jane Morris
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Correspondence to Ademola A Adenle.

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Adenle, A., Morris, E., Murphy, D. et al. Rationalizing governance of genetically modified products in developing countries. Nat Biotechnol 36, 137–139 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.4069

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