Regulation of genetic engineering
[20][21][22][23] The legal and regulatory status of GM foods varies by country, with some nations banning or restricting them, and others permitting them with widely differing degrees of regulation.
[24][25][26][27] There is no evidence to support the idea that the consumption of approved GM food has a detrimental effect on human health.
[28][29][30] Some scientists and advocacy groups, such as Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund, have however called for additional and more rigorous testing for GM food.
[32] The Asilomar recommendations were voluntary, but in 1976 the US National Institute of Health (NIH) formed a rDNA advisory committee.
[33] This was followed by other regulatory offices (the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA)), effectively making all rDNA research tightly regulated in the US.
A first joint FAO/WHO consultation in 1990 resulted in the publication of the report ‘Strategies for Assessing the Safety of Foods Produced by Biotechnology’ in 1991.
[46] and updated its guidelines for import and export of food in 2004,[47] The European Union first introduced laws requiring GMOs to be labelled in 1997.
Universities and research institutes generally have a special committee that is responsible for approving any experiments that involve genetic engineering.
They are then assigned to one of four risk categories based on their virulence, the severity of disease, the mode of transmission, and the availability of preventive measures or treatments.
[51] In Europe the use of living GMOs are regulated by the European Directive on the contained use of genetically modified microorganisms (GMMs).
[50] The regulations require risk assessments before use of any contained GMOs is started and assurances that the correct controls are in place.
[53] In the UK the Genetically Modified Organisms (Contained Use) Regulations 2014 provides the framework researchers must follow when using GMOs.
These include systems using standard laboratory strains as the hosts, recombinant DNA that does not code for a vertebrate toxin or is not derived from a micro-organism that can cause disease in humans.
These are known as licensed dealings and include cloning any genes that code for vertebrate toxins or using hosts that are capable of causing disease in humans.
Laboratory work with GMOs classified as low risk, which include knockout mice, are carried out in PC1 lab.
[58][59] The European Union enacted regulatory laws in 2003 that provided possibly the most stringent GMO regulations in the world.
Also, the level of GMO acceptance in the European Union varies across its countries with Spain and Portugal being more permissive of GMOs than France and the Nordic population.
[65] In June 2014 the European Parliament approved that individual member states are allowed to restrict or ban the growth of GM crops within their territory.
Austria, France, Greece, Hungary, Germany, and Luxembourg had prohibited the growth or sale of bioengineered foods in their territory in 2015.
By 2015, sixteen countries declared they want to opt out of EU-approved GM crops, including GMOs from major companies like Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta and Pioneer.
Agricultural stakeholders especially felt it would have excessively restricted genetic engineering and even new methods of conventional plant breeding.
[79] In Brazil the National Biosafety Technical Commission is responsible for assessing environmental and food safety and prepares guidelines for transport, importation and field experiments involving GM products, while the Council of Ministers evaluates the commercial and economical issues with release.
The individual state governments can then assess the impact of release on markets and trade and apply further legislation to control approved genetically modified products.
[91] Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Australia require labeling so consumers can exercise choice between foods that have genetically modified, conventional or organic origins.
Any shipments contain genetically modified organisms that are intended to be used as feed, food or for processing must be identified and a list of the transgenic events be available.
These concepts refer, respectively, to the complete measured biochemical spectrum (total fingerprint) of compounds (metabolites) or of proteins present in a food or crop.
[99] GM plants and animals were being developed around the same time, but due to the complexity of their biology and inefficiency with laboratory equipment use, their appearance in the market was delayed.
[100] There are six categories that genetically engineered (GE) animals are approved for:[101] But see also:Domingo, José L.; Bordonaba, Jordi Giné (2011).
Anyhow, this represents a notable advance in comparison with the lack of studies published in recent years in scientific journals by those companies.Krimsky, Sheldon (2015).
Here, we show that a number of articles some of which have strongly and negatively influenced the public opinion on GM crops and even provoked political actions, such as GMO embargo, share common flaws in the statistical evaluation of the data.
