What are the government role in GM foods?

Governments around the world are hard at work to establish a regulatory process to monitor the effects of and approve new varieties of GM plants. Yet depending on the political, social and economic climate within a region or country, different governments are responding in different ways.
In Japan, the Ministry of Health and Welfare has announced that health testing of GM foods will be mandatory as of April 200136, 37. Currently, testing of GM foods is voluntary. Japanese supermarkets are offering both GM foods and unmodified foods, and customers are beginning to show a strong preference for unmodified fruits and vegetables.
India's government has not yet announced a policy on GM foods because no GM crops are grown in India and no products are commercially available in supermarkets yet38. India is, however, very supportive of transgenic plant research. It is highly likely that India will decide that the benefits of GM foods outweigh the risks because Indian agriculture will need to adopt drastic new measures to counteract the country's endemic poverty and feed its exploding population.
Some states in Brazil have banned GM crops entirely, and the Brazilian Institute for the Defense of Consumers, in collaboration with Greenpeace, has filed suit to prevent the importation of GM crops39,. Brazilian farmers, however, have resorted to smuggling GM soybean seeds into the country because they fear economic harm if they are unable to compete in the global marketplace with other grain-exporting countries.
In Europe, anti-GM food protestors have been especially active. In the last few years Europe has experienced two major foods scares: bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) in Great Britain and dioxin-tainted foods originating from Belgium. These food scares have undermined consumer confidence about the European food supply, and citizens are disinclined to trust government information about GM foods. In response to the public outcry, Europe now requires mandatory food labeling of GM foods in stores, and the European Commission (EC) has established a 1% threshold for contamination of unmodified foods with GM food products40.
In the United States, the regulatory process is confused because there are three different government agencies that have jurisdiction over GM foods. To put it very simply, the EPA evaluates GM plants for environmental safety, the USDA evaluates whether the plant is safe to grow, and the FDA evaluates whether the plant is safe to eat. The EPA is responsible for regulating substances such as pesticides or toxins that may cause harm to the environment. GM crops such as B.t. pesticide-laced corn or herbicide-tolerant crops but not foods modified for their nutritional value fall under the purview of the EPA. The USDA is responsible for GM crops that do not fall under the umbrella of the EPA such as drought-tolerant or disease-tolerant crops, crops grown for animal feeds, or whole fruits, vegetables and grains for human consumption. The FDA historically has been concerned with pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and food products and additives, not whole foods. Under current guidelines, a genetically-modified ear of corn sold at a produce stand is not regulated by the FDA because it is a whole food, but a box of cornflakes is regulated because it is a food product. The FDA's stance is that GM foods are substantially equivalent to unmodified, "natural" foods, and therefore not subject to FDA regulation.
The EPA conducts risk assessment studies on pesticides that could potentially cause harm to human health and the environment, and establishes tolerance and residue levels for pesticides. There are strict limits on the amount of pesticides that may be applied to crops during growth and production, as well as the amount that remains in the food after processing. Growers using pesticides must have a license for each pesticide and must follow the directions on the label to accord with the EPA's safety standards. Government inspectors may periodically visit farms and conduct investigations to ensure compliance. Violation of government regulations may result in steep fines, loss of license and even jail sentences.
As an example the EPA regulatory approach, consider B.t. corn. The EPA has not established limits on residue levels in B.t corn because the B.t. in the corn is not sprayed as a chemical pesticide but is a gene that is integrated into the genetic material of the corn itself. Growers must have a license from the EPA for B.t corn, and the EPA has issued a letter for the 2000 growing season requiring farmers to plant 20% unmodified corn, and up to 50% unmodified corn in regions where cotton is also cultivated41. This planting strategy may help prevent insects from developing resistance to the B.t. pesticides as well as provide a refuge for non-target insects such as Monarch butterflies.
The USDA has many internal divisions that share responsibility for assessing GM foods. Among these divisions are APHIS, the Animal Health and Plant Inspection Service, which conducts field tests and issues permits to grow GM crops, the Agricultural Research Service which performs in-house GM food research, and the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service which oversees the USDA risk assessment program. The USDA is concerned with potential hazards of the plant itself. Does it harbor insect pests? Is it a noxious weed? Will it cause harm to indigenous species if it escapes from farmer's fields? The USDA has the power to impose quarantines on problem regions to prevent movement of suspected plants, restrict import or export of suspected plants, and can even destroy plants cultivated in violation of USDA regulations. Many GM plants do not require USDA permits from APHIS. A GM plant does not require a permit if it meets these 6 criteria: 1) the plant is not a noxious weed; 2) the genetic material introduced into the GM plant is stably integrated into the plant's own genome; 3) the function of the introduced gene is known and does not cause plant disease; 4) the GM plant is not toxic to non-target organisms; 5) the introduced gene will not cause the creation of new plant viruses; and 6) the GM plant cannot contain genetic material from animal or human pathogens (see http://www.aphis.usda.gov:80/bbep/bp/7cfr340 ).
The current FDA policy was developed in 1992 (Federal Register Docket No. 92N-0139) and states that agri-biotech companies may voluntarily ask the FDA for a consultation. Companies working to create new GM foods are not required to consult the FDA, nor are they required to follow the FDA's recommendations after the consultation. Consumer interest groups wish this process to be mandatory, so that all GM food products, whole foods or otherwise, must be approved by the FDA before being released for commercialization. The FDA counters that the agency currently does not have the time, money, or resources to carry out exhaustive health and safety studies of every proposed GM food product. Moreover, the FDA policy as it exists today does not allow for this type of intervention.
(Taken from: http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/gmfood/overview.php)

Assessing the Impact of GMOs on the Environment
CSIRO researchers are exploring how a broad range of GMOs might impact on the environment at the landscape or ecosystem level
CSIRO is committed to examining the effects of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) on the environment.
This commitment was formalised in 2000, when a three-year project began, involving scientists from seven Divisions. This project was one of the activities carried out under the government’s National Biotechnology Strategy. Environment Australia provided part of the $3 million funding.
The aim is to explore how a broad range of GMOs might impact on the environment at the landscape or ecosystem level. It aimed to build research capabilities in this area and develop research tools to assess potential environmental risks of GMO uptake. Eventually the scientists hope to transfer the best of these tools to the regulators to help them in assessing whether new GMOs should be released.
Ecological risk assessment at the landscape level is a new research field worldwide and most of the work of the original project was aimed at establishing a better understanding of the scale and nature of issues relevant to the Australian environment.
The research team has worked on several GMOs for their case studies. These are:
Bt-cotton in large-scale crops
GM clover for temperate pastures
Plants containing viral sequences
Mice plague control.
Amongst the findings so far are the facts that:
Bt-cotton plants express Bt-toxin in small amounts through both their leaves and roots. The majority of this toxin degrades within 2-4 weeks of plant biomass being incorporated into leaf decomposition in soil. This means that in general, Bt-toxin from GM cotton will not have an adverse effect on the environment. However, research into the impact of the minority of Bt-toxin that may persist in the soil has not been done yet
There is an apparent increase in fungi and fungal spores found on Bt-cotton residues compared to non-Bt resides. We do not know yet whether this increase, if real, is good, neutral or harmful to the environment
GM subterranean clover poses little threat to native grasslands in Australia. It will survive less well than non-GM clover if it strays into native perennial grasslands but it may survive better in more disturbed, annual grassland communities
To help focus the continuing research a Joint Reference group has been established by CSIRO, the Department of the Environment and Heritage and the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator to identify priority areas for risk assessment research and seek out realistic case studies on which to test new methods.
The assessment team has also advised the Federal Government on the relevance to Australia of overseas studies of environmental impact of GMOs. The first of these has been farm-scale trials in the UK, reported in 2003.
(Taken from: http://www.csiro.au/pubgenesite/faqs.htm)

The Commonwealth Health portfolio has responsibility for overseeing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Australia and does this through the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR).
Before any new GM crops are brought to market they are thoroughly evaluated for environmental safety on a case-by-case basis by the regulator. The OGTR is required to seek advice and comments from the Minister for the Environment, the public, scientists and various regulatory agencies, including Food Standards Australia New Zealand.
(Taken from: http://www.csiro.au/pubgenesite/faqs.htm)

What are GM foods?

· GM is a special set of technologies that alter the genetic makeup of such living organisms as animals, plants, or bacteria.
· using living organisms or their components, such as enzymes, to make products that include wine, cheese, beer, and yogurt
· Combining genes from different organisms is known as recombinant DNA technology, and the resulting organism is said to be "genetically modified," "genetically engineered," or "transgenic."

(Taken from:
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/gmfood.shtml)

· genetically modified food crops included virus-resistant squash, a potato variant that included an organic pesticide called Bt (NB: the EPA classified the Bt potato as a pesticide, but required no labeling), strains of canola, soybean, corn and cotton engineered by Monsanto to be immmune to their popular herbicide Roundup, and Bt corn.
(Taken from: Wikipedia)

· Genetic engineering, on the other hand, can create plants with the exact desired trait very rapidly and with great accuracy
(taken from:
http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/gmfood/overview.php)