OUTLINE

GM) Crops

GM) Crops

Introduction

Some commonly expressed environmental concerns about GM crops are: 1) gene flow between the transgenic plants and their sexually compatible relatives, 2) changes in levels of weediness or invasiveness of the GM crops or their wild relatives; 3) horizontal transfer of engineered traits to other species, 4) non-target effects and 5) development of pest resistance or new secondary pests (Taylor, 2003, 128). In the decade and a half since the agricultural biotechnology industry in the United States staged its first field trials, federal and state governments and private corporations have spent billions of dollars on research, commercial development, and regulation.

This paper focuses primarily on the environmental successes and failures of that investment and the implications of that experience for U.S. readiness to deal with the next generation of agricultural biotechnology products. Largely between 1997 and 1999, genetically modified (GM) food ingredients suddenly appeared in 2/3rds of all US processed foods. This food alteration was fueled by a single Supreme Court ruling. It allowed, for the first time, the patenting of life forms for commercialization. Since then thousands of applications for experimental genetically-modified (GM) organisms, including quite bizarre GMOs, have been filed with the US Patent Office alone, and many more abroad. Furthermore an economic war broke out to own equity in firms that legally claimed such patent rights or the means to control not only genetically modified organisms but vast reaches of human food supplies (Taylor, 2003, 128).

The U.S. Approach to the regulation of biotechnology products

In the United States, the nascent agricultural industry emerged in the early 1980s—a product of two decades of dramatic advances in molecular biology research. As it became clear that the industry was contemplating a broad variety of products, including many that would be used out of doors, the Reagan administration began to grapple with questions of regulatory oversight. Even though it tended to resist regulation as a general matter, the Reagan administration eventually decided to fashion a new "regulatory framework" made up of old statutes (Taylor, 2003, 128). It explicitly rejected the option of new regulatory legislation targeted to biotechnology products, at least in part because administration policy was premised on the similarity of biotechnology to earlier reproductive technologies.

Although more palatable to biotechnology proponents than new legislation, the framework approach nevertheless presented daunting challenges. Many of the existing statutes were old and odd fits for the new technology and much work was required to twist them into shape. The statutes that became the centerpiece of the framework governed plant pests, drugs, food, new chemicals, and pesticides (Hellmich, 2001, 11925-30).

Genetically Engineered Crops On The Market In The United States

So far, more than 40 genetically modified crops are currently allowed in commerce in the United States. Two traits—herbicide tolerance (HT) and insect resistance (Bt) engineered into four commodity crops (corn, cotton, soybeans, and canola)—dominate the products that have succeeded on the marketplace(Hellmich, 2001, 11925-30). Monsanto's products are the most popular of these crops but three other companies—DuPont/Pioneer, Syngenta, and Dow/Mycogen—also market ...