Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
safety (Schulman, 1993; Bourrier, 2001; Weick & Sutcliffe, 2001; Perin,
2005). The idea here is to envision plausible parallel efforts to tackle
the dissemination issue for GM crop growing. What could be a sensible
“defense-in-depth” for large-scale GM production?
Defense-in-depthforGMCropGrowing:ASnapshot?
The design of “defense-in-depth” for this kind of production should
certainly not be envisioned in the same way as the more traditional
“defense-in-depth” already in place in high-risk industries. Building
fences against gene flows and winds is a daunting challenge. However,
the difficulty should not and have not discouraged the various stake-
holders from finding acceptable precautions, which could contribute to
building a modern hazard-mitigation strategy. Several ideas have been
brought in, as this volume illustrates. They could be interpreted as an
embryonic model of “defense-in-depth,” whose development is more
pressing in the context of Plant-Made Pharmaceuticals. Vaccines, mon-
oclonal antibodies, therapeutic enzymes, hormones, or interferon are
among the substances that could be obtained from GM plants such as
maize, tobacco, soybean, or barley. Some examples of possible barriers
are explored next.
TechnologicalandPhysicalBarriers
Biological containment could be envisioned as a technological barrier.
It includes measures aimed at preventing genetically modified organ-
isms and their transgenes from disseminating into the environment. So
far three major technical strategies are under consideration: cleistoga-
mous plants; male-sterile plants, and transplastomic plants. In cleistoga-
mous plants, flowers do not open, hence no pollen is released. In male-
sterile plants, no pollen is produced and in transplastomic plants, the new
genes have not been inserted in the nuclear DNA but in the DNA of the
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