“Modern biotechnology broadens the scope of the genetic changes that can be made in food organisms, and broadens the scope of possible sources of foods. This does not inherently lead to foods that are less safe than those developed by conventional techniques. Therefore, evaluation of food and food components obtained from organisms developed by the application of the newer techniques does not necessitate a fundamental change in established principles, not does it require a different standard of safety.” (OECD, 1993. Safety Evaluation of Foods Derived through Modern Biotechnology: Concepts and Principles. Paris. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/57/3/1946129.pdf)
“All methods of plant breeding can induce unexpected or unintended changes in plants, including pleiotropic effects. It is not possible to design a test to identify these effects. Instead, the FDA has encouraged developers to examine whether important nutrients, toxicants, and other components are present in the new plant variety at levels that are within the range expected for commercial varieties.” (US FDA, 1992. Policy Statement on Foods Derived from Biotechnology; Kessler D.A., Taylor M.R., Maryanski, J.H., Flamm E.L., and L.S. Kahl. Science. 256:1747 http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/biotechm.html)
“Traditional plant breeding methods include wide crosses with closely related wild species and may involve a long process of crossing back to the commercial parent to remove undesirable genes. A feature of GM technology is that it involves the introduction of one or, at most, a few well-defined genes-rather than the introduction of whole genomes or parts of chromosomes as in traditional plant breeding. This makes toxicity testing for transgenic plants more straightforward than it is for conventionally produced plants with new traits, because it is much clearer what the new features are in the modified plant. On the other hand, GM technology can introduce genes from diverse organisms, some of which have little history in the food supply.” (National Academy of Sciences from seven countries. Transgenic Plants and World Agriculture. published by U.S. NAS. 2000. http://www.nap.edu/books/NI000227/html/)
“While rDNA techniques may result in the production of organisms expressing a combination of traits that are not observed in nature, genetic changes from rDNA techniques will often have inherently greater predictability compared to traditional techniques because of the greater precision that the rDNA technique affords; (and) it is expected that any risks associated with the applications of rDNA organisms may be assessed in generally the same way as those associated with non-rDNA organisms” (OECD, 1986. Recombinant DNA Safety Considerations. National Experts on Biotechnology. Paris. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/45/54/1943773.pdf)
“Recombinant DNA methodology makes it possible to introduce piece of DNA consisting of either single or multiple genes, that can be defined in function and even in nucleotide sequence. With classical techniques of gene transfer, a variable number of genes can be transferred….; but predicting the precise number or the traits that have been transferred is difficult, and we cannot always predict the phenotypic expression that will result. With organisms modified by molecular methods, we are in a better, if not perfect, position to predict phenotypic expression.” (National Research Council, 1989. Field Testing Genetically Modified Organisms: Framework for Decisions. Washington, DC. National Academy Press)
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