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Regulatory regimes for transgenic crops

Nature Biotechnology volume 23, pages 785–787 (2005)Cite this article

To the editor:

In the April issue (Nat. Biotechnol. 23, 439–444, 2005), Strauss and colleagues argue that the methods used to produce food crops should not be the focus of regulatory oversight, only the phenotypic traits of the resultant plants as defined in terms of standard agricultural practice. They propose that any risk and safety assessments of crops produced by genetic engineering (GE) should be based only upon the nature of the introduced genes. They also claim that transgenic crops face a “daunting” array of regulatory requirements. However, safety testing requirements in the United States are largely voluntary and in my view inadequate (for a review of regulations from my perspective, see ref. 1). Safety concerns related to the GE process itself as well as its unintended consequences are set aside by Strauss and colleagues as irrelevant, for they claim that the products of genetic events that occur naturally and with standard plant breeding techniques are fundamentally the same as those that occur with GE. Are these arguments a valid reflection of what is known about the precision and consequences of the GE process compared with naturally occurring genomic variation?

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  1. Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory, The Salk Institute, 10010 N. Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, 92037, California, USA

    David Schubert

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Schubert, D. Regulatory regimes for transgenic crops. Nat Biotechnol 23, 785–787 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0705-785b

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