Advances in genetically engineered (GE) crop breeding have encouraged new measures to be taken when analysing crop safety. A policy forum has been published in Science that argues that current measures for safety testing vary dramatically across countries and often lack scientific merit.

The new proposed framework would focus on specific characteristics of crops rather than the methods and processes of GE crop creation. By using so called ‘-omics’ approaches, genomics could be used to scan new crop varieties for unexpected DNA changes. This method would reveal whether a product from a new variety is substantially equivalent to products already being distributed.

This type of testing would mean that, should there be no differences or understood differences, no safety testing would be recommended as there would be no expected health of environmental concerns. However, if differences were flagged, safety testing would be recommended.

“The approaches used right now – which differ among governments – lack scientific rigor,” said Fred Gould, University Distinguished Professor at North Carolina State University, co-director of NC State’s Genetic Engineering and Society Center and the corresponding author of the article.

“The size of the change made to a product and the origin of the DNA have little relationship with the results of that change; changing one base pair of DNA in a crop with 2.5 billion base pairs, like corn, can make a substantial difference.”

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