BioSafety, Volume 4, Paper 2 (BY98002) 1998
Online Journal - URL: http://www.bdt.org.br/bioline/by
Hierarchical risk assessment of transgenic plants: proposal for an
integrated system.
Strandberg, B., Kjellsson, G. and Lokke, H.
Date received: 18 March 1998
Date accepted: 16 June 1998
Date published: 8 July 1998
Code Number:BY98002
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Text: 69.7K
Graphics: Line drawing (gif) - 22K
SUMMARY
The increasingly high number of applications to release or market
transgenic plants calls for an effective and uniform treatment. Regulatory
authorities in most countries are evaluating the safety of transgenic
plants; however, internationally standardised and consistent schemes, test
procedures and concepts have not been fully developed. This paper discusses
the procedure of risk assessment of transgenic plants and proposes a three-
step hierarchical framework for the assessment required before marketing is
permitted. This approach is parallel to the hierarchal test systems which
have been established for handling risks from toxic compounds. The
relevance and complexity of information obtained can be increased but often
at high cost and time consumption. The approach requires increasing
information from the individual level through population and ecosystem
levels to regional scale. It is proposed that experimental tests of the
transgenic plants should be conducted at each tier, and the evaluation
following the analysis should be based on acceptance criteria. The use of
the principle of substantial equivalence of the transgenic plant and the
receiver plant is suggested, but the concept should be further developed.
Follow-up mechanisms such as monitoring programmes may be logical
consequences of the principles of risk assessment, and may contibute to the
learning process of handling risks of transgenic plants.
Keywords: acceptance criteria, ecological risk assessment,
genetically modified plants (GMP), hierarchical approach, monitoring,
stress tolerance, toxic compounds, transgenic plants
Copyright remains with the author.
Published by Bioline Publications.
