Application of laws, policies, and guidance from the United States and Canada to the regulation of food and feed derived from genetically modified crops: interpretation of composition data.

With the development of recombinant DNA techniques for genetically modifying plants to exhibit beneficial traits, laws and regulations were adopted to ensure the safety of food and feed derived from such plants. This paper focuses on the regulation of genetically modified (GM) plants in Canada and the United States, with emphasis on the results of the compositional analysis routinely utilized as an indicator of possible unintended effects resulting from genetic modification. This work discusses the mandate of Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency as well as the U.

Unintended compositional changes in genetically modified (GM) crops: 20 years of research.

The compositional equivalency between genetically modified (GM) crops and nontransgenic comparators has been a fundamental component of human health safety assessment for 20 years. During this time, a large amount of information has been amassed on the compositional changes that accompany both the transgenesis process and traditional breeding methods; additionally, the genetic mechanisms behind these changes have been elucidated. After two decades, scientists are encouraged to objectively assess this body of literature and determine if sufficient scientific uncertainty still exists to continue the general requirement for these studies to support the safety assessment of transgenic crops.