Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
consequence has been the recurring incidents of inadvertent, low-level
contamination of conventional crops and foods that incur business losses.
Several factors may have contributed to this good fortune. Despite
fears, there may be natural limits on the capacity of GM crops and
foods to harm health and the environment. Another may be that regula-
tory expertise at FDA and the other agencies may have been sufficient
to effectively employ relaxed methods of oversight and regulation, and
to have exercised sound judgment on the quality of industry-provided
studies, despite the critics who have argued that safety requires more
stringent and detailed prescriptive rules, prolonged testing, independent
studies, postmarket vigilance, transparency, and public involvement in
proceedings. More likely is that the foreseeable and rapid economic
impacts on crop and food markets and the lawsuits that would follow
any reports about suspected or actual harms to human health and the
environment have caused GM seed companies and food producers to be
precautionary in advancing their new products.
Yet this approach to ensuring the safety of the GM enterprise has
limitations that should be cause for several concerns and improvements.
Relaxed regulation that depends on industry-developed studies and
neglects robust postmarket surveillance fails to inspire confidence that
hazards will be eliminated from the forthcoming multitude of new prod-
ucts and that existing products will not have serious adverse and irre-
versible effects over the long term. This is especially important because
GM crops and foods are being introduced in developing nations that lack
the regulatory apparatus and expertise to protect their interests and look
to the U.S. system for assurances of safety.
Another concern is that the recurring incidents of contamination
of conventional crops indicate that the U.S. system is currently inca-
pable of ensuring coexistence between GM and conventional farming
and thereby preserving consumer access to non-GM food. Clearly, there
is a need for improvement in this regard, particularly because a new gen-
eration of GM crops with traits for producing medical and other indus-
trial products are being introduced and if this leads to contamination of
