Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
3
Guidance Documents for
Nutritional and Safety Assessment
of Feeds from GM Plants
Yi Liu,* Anna Christodoulidou, Antonio Fernandez
Dumont, Andrea Germini and Claudia Paoletti
European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), GMO Unit, Parma, Italy
non-feed uses and their cultivation. h ese
guidance documents, explaining the strategy
and dei ning the scientii c criteria to conduct
the risk assessment, are in line with risk
assessment principles developed and agreed
at the international level.
To date, applications for GMOs have
included only plants and microorganisms.
Since GM animals and derived food and feed
products are still in the development phase,
this chapter will focus on the safety and
nutritional assessment of GM plants and
their derived products in the EU. h e
nutritional and safety assessment of GM
plants in other parts of the world is
summarized briel y at the end of the chapter.
h e risk assessment of GM microorganisms
is discussed in Chapter 11 of this topic.
h ere is a Russian textbook available on
Genetically Modii ed Food Sources - Safety
Assessment and Control
(Tutelyan, 2013);
however, the timing of this publication
meant that this topic could not be considered
in the present volume.
h e use of genetically modii ed organisms
(GMOs) - their deliberate release into the
environment, their import and processing
for food, feed and industrial uses - is
regulated in the European Union (EU).
Since the 1990s, dif erent legislative
instruments have been put in place to
ensure their safety. Directive 2001/18/EC
and Regulation (EC) No 1829/2003 are the
main legal instruments regulating the
cultivation and marketing of GMOs and
derived products in the EU. A key
requirement of these two legislations is a
comprehensive and science-based risk
assessment, which is a prerequisite for
placing GMOs and their products on the EU
market. h is centralized risk assessment is
performed by the European Food Safety
Authority (EFSA), with the support of a
panel of independent experts on GMOs
(EFSA GMO Panel), a team of scientists
from the EFSA GMO Unit and the input of
EU member states. In the case of deliberate
release into the environment by cultivation,
the environmental risk assessment is
carried out by a national competent
authority of an EU member state. Such
assessment is taken into account by the
EFSA when preparing its scientii c opinion.
h e EFSA GMO Panel has published a set
of guidance documents for the risk assess-
ment of GM plants, their derived products
for food and/or feed uses, non-food and/or
h e i rst legal instruments regulating GMOs
in the EU (Council Directive 90/220/EEC
and Council Directive 90/219/EEC) were
developed in 1990 with the specii c scope to
protect human and animal health and the
environment. Since then, the main legal
instrument, considered as the horizontal
