The Safety of Foods Developed by Biotechnology

Editor’s Choice: Crop Genome Plasticity and Its Relevance to Food and Feed Safety of Genetically Engineered Breeding Stacks

“…Although the presence of a few additional duplicated sequences derived from transgenes is unlikely to result in a measureable increase in genome instability, it is still pertinent to address the ability of such changes to compromise food and feed safety, since it has been argued that plants contain dormant metabolic changes that could become active due to genomic instability of various types (Kessler et al, 1992).…”

Genetically Modified Crops and Hybridization with Wild Relatives: A UK Perspective

“…These effects are not considered here but they have been addressed in the literature (e.g. Knight 1989;Goldburg & Tjaden 1990;Flavell et al 1992;Kessler et al 1992). …”

Bringing New Plant Varieties to Market: Plant Breeding and Selection Practices Advance Beneficial Characteristics while Minimizing Unintended Changes

“…Importantly, these practices also minimize the advancement of unintended changes that might affect the safety of a new variety (European Commission, 2010;NAS, 2016). When genetic engineering of plants was first being developed, it was hypothesized that this technology might induce potentially unintended changes that affect food or feed safety-for example, by activating previously dormant pathways in the plant (Kessler et al, 1992). As a result, extensive regulatory requirements for GM crops, which use a comparative safety assessment process, are now in place (König et al, 2004;Cellini et al, 2004;EFSA, 2006;Paoletti et al, 2008;CODEX, 2009;Privalle et al, 2012;Hoekenga et al, 2013;Prado et al, 2014).…”