Agriculture Reference
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authorizing the placing on the market of GM food were adopted under
the Novel Foods Regulation, and five decisions authorizing the placing
on the market of GM feed were adopted under Directive 2001/18/EC
(see Table 1).
Of the eighty applications forwarded to EFSA by June 2010, five have
been withdrawn, eighteen authorizations were granted by the Commis-
sion during March 2006 andMarch 2010 for foods and feeds derived from
GMvarieties of maize, soybean, cotton, rapeseed, sugar beet, and potato,
and six applications for renewals of authorization of existing products are
pending (see Table 1). Thirteen of the remaining applications have been
assessed by EFSA by June 2010. 34
Safety Assessment
Whereas regulatory frameworks differ across jurisdictions, the
approaches to the safety assessment of foods derived from GMO
are similar in most countries, as they are based on general principles and
guidelines for risk assessment that have been elaborated by international
and national organizations with competence in food safety long before
the first commercialization of GMO-derived foods. 35
Skepticism toward GMO in quite a few EU member-states has
caused the European Commission to finance a research project to
address scientific as well as societal issues related to the introduction of
GM crops. The European Network on Safety Assessment of Genetically
Modified Food Crops, with the acronym ENTRANSFOOD, began its
work in February 2000. One of the objectives of the ENTRANSFOOD
project was to evaluate the adequacy of current food safety assess-
ment methods and strategies that had been developed and continuously
adapted in accordance with the state of the art by various international
and national organizations during the last two decades. As one of the
34 http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/gmo/gmoscdocs.htm.
35 OECD. 2000. Compendium of National Food Safety Systems and Activities. Ad Hoc
Group on Food Safety. OECD. Paris.
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