Environmental Effects of Transgenic Plants: The Scope and Adequacy of Regulation

343 Pages·2002·2.71 MB·English

by  National Academy Press National Research Council

Committee on Environmental Impacts Associated with
Commercialization of Transgenic Plants
Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources
Division on Earth and Life Studies
National Research Council
NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS
Washington, D.C.
NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS 2101 Constitution Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20418
NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Gov-
erning Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from
the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engi-
neering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible
for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for
appropriate balance.
This study was supported by Cooperative Agreements No. 59-0790-0-173 and No.
99-1001-0229-GR between the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations
expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the organizations or agencies that provided support for the
project.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Environmental effects of transgenic plants : the scope and adequacy of
regulation / Committee on Environmental Impacts associated with
Commercialization of Transgenic Plants Board on Agriculture and Natural
Resources Division on Earth and Life Studies, National Research Council.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
ISBN 0-309-08263-3 (hardcover)
1. Transgenic plants—Risk assessment. 2. Agricultural
biotechnology—Environmental aspects. I. National Research Council.
Committee on Environmental Impacts.
SB123.57 .E58 2002
631.5’233—dc21
2001008715
Environmental Effects of Transgenic Plants: The Scope and Adequacy of Regulation is
available from the National Academy Press, 2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W.,
Lockbox 285, Washington, DC 20055; [phone] or [phone] (in the
Washington metropolitan area); http://www.nap.edu.
Copyright 2002 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
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National Research Council
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COMMITTEE* ON ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS ASSOCIATED
WITH COMMERCIALIZATION OF TRANSGENIC PLANTS
FRED L. GOULD, Chair, North Carolina State University, Raleigh
DAVID A. ANDOW, University of Minnesota, St. Paul
BERND BLOSSEY, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
IGNACIO CHAPELA, University of California, Berkeley
NORMAN C. ELLSTRAND, University of California, Riverside
NICHOLAS JORDAN, University of Minnesota, St. Paul
KENDALL R. LAMKEY, Iowa State University, Ames
BRIAN A. LARKINS, University of Arizona, Tucson
DEBORAH K. LETOURNEAU, University of California, Santa Cruz
ALAN McHUGHEN, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon
RONALD L. PHILLIPS, University of Minnesota, St. Paul
PAUL B. THOMPSON, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana
Staff
KIM WADDELL, Study Director
HEATHER CHRISTIANSEN, Research Associate
KAREN L. IMHOF, Project Assistant (from January 2000 to March 2001)
MICHAEL R. KISIELEWSKI, Research Assistant (since March 2001)
BARBARA BODLING, Editor
*The work of this committee was overseen by the Committee on Agricultural Biotechnol-
ogy, Health, and the Environment, of the Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources and
the Board on Life Sciences.
v
COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURAL BIOTECHNOLOGY, HEALTH,
AND THE ENVIRONMENT
BARBARA A. SCHAAL, Co-Chair, Washington University, St. Louis
HAROLD E. VARMUS, Co-Chair, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer
Center, New York, New York
DAVID A. ANDOW, University of Minnesota, St. Paul
FREDERICK M. AUSUBEL, Harvard Medical School, Boston,
Massachusetts
NEAL L. FIRST, University of Wisconsin, Madison
LYNN J. FREWER, Institute of Food Research, Norwich, England
HENRY L. GHOLZ, National Science Foundation, Arlington, Virginia
ERIC M. HALLERMAN, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University, Blacksburg
CALESTOUS JUMA, Harvard University
NOEL T. KEEN, University of California, Riverside
SAMUEL B. LEHRER, Tulane University School of Medicine, New
Orleans, Louisiana
J. MICHAEL McGINNIS, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton,
New Jersey
SANFORD A. MILLER, Georgetown University
PER PINSTRUP-ANDERSON, International Food Policy Research
Institute, Washington, D.C.
VERNON W. RUTTAN, University of Minnesota, St. Paul
ELLEN K. SILBERGELD, University of Maryland Medical School,
Baltimore
ROBERT E. SMITH, R.E. Smith Consulting, Inc., Newport, Vermont
ALLISON A. SNOW, Ohio State University, Columbus
DIANA H. WALL, Colorado State University, Fort Collins
Staff
JENNIFER KUZMA, Senior Program Officer
LAURA HOLLIDAY, Research Assistant
vi
BOARD ON AGRICULTURE AND NATURAL RESOURCES
HARLEY W. MOON, Chair, Iowa State University
CORNELIA B. FLORA, Iowa State University
ROBERT B. FRIDLEY, University of California, Davis
BARBARA GLENN, Federation of Animal Science Societies, Bethesda,
Maryland
W.R. (REG) GOMES, University of California, Oakland
LINDA GOLODNER, National Consumers League, Washington, D.C.
PERRY R. HAGENSTEIN, Institute for Forest Analysis, Planning, and
Policy, Wayland, Massachusetts
GEORGE R. HALLBERG, The Cadmus Group, Inc., Boston,
Massachusetts
CALESTOUS JUMA, Harvard University
GILBERT A. LEVEILLE, McNeil Consumer Healthcare, Denville, New
Jersey
WHITNEY MacMILLAN, Cargill, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota (retired)
TERRY L. MEDLEY, DuPont BioSolutions Enterprise, Wilmington,
Delaware
WILLIAM L. OGREN, U.S. Department of Agriculture (retired)
ALICE PELL, Cornell University
NANCY J. RACHMAN, Novigen Sciences, Inc., Washington, D.C.
G. EDWARD SCHUH, University of Minnesota
BRIAN STASKAWICZ, University of California, Berkeley
JOHN W. SUTTIE, University of Wisconsin, Madison
JAMES TUMLINSON, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural
Research Service
JAMES J. ZUICHES, Washington State University
Staff
WARREN R. MUIR, Executive Director (since June 1999)
DAVID L. MEEKER, Director (from March 2000 to August 2001)
CHARLOTTE KIRK BAER, Director (since September 2001)
JULIE ANDREWS, Senior Project Assistant
vii
BOARD ON LIFE SCIENCES
COREY S. GOODMAN, Chair, University of California, Berkeley
DAVID EISENBERG, University of California, Los Angeles
DAVID J. GALAS, Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Science,
Claremont, California
BARBARA GASTEL, Texas A&M University, College Station
JAMES M. GENTILE, Hope College, Holland, Michigan
ROBERT T. PAINE, University of Washington, Seattle
STUART L. PIMM, Columbia University
JOAN B. ROSE, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg
GERALD M. RUBIN, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Chevy Chase,
Maryland
RAYMOND L. WHITE, University of Utah, Salt Lake City
Staff
WARREN R. MUIR, Executive Director (since June 1999)
FRANCES SHARPLES, Director
BRIDGET AVILA, Senior Project Assistant
viii
Preface
In assessing the conclusions of any report on a subject as controver-
sial as agricultural biotechnology, I certainly would want to know about
the background of the individuals who wrote the report, and the process
used to write it. So before you delve into the contents of this report I
would like to tell you about our committee and the process that we used
in writing this report. “About the Authors” provides background infor-
mation on each of the 12 committee members who wrote the report. The
committee followed the general National Research Council guidelines for
report writing, with more specific steps in the process determined by the
committee members. This report is a consensus document. Therefore,
every member of the committee had an opportunity to question the con-
tent of each page, and in the end had to determine that he or she could
consent to all of the report findings and recommendations. Had any com-
mittee member written the report alone, the conclusions would have been
different. Some view this as a weakness of the consensus process—too
much compromise. Based on my experience with this specific report, I
strongly disagree with that perspective. What I saw in our consensus
process was that logic and detailed information prevailed. It was easy for
us to come to consensus on some issues but in other cases there were
lengthy debates. In the approximately 15 months from the time of our
first meeting until we finally signed off on the report, members of the
committee had time to present specific arguments on multiple occasions
with the opportunity to collect data to back up their arguments in be-
tween meetings or conference calls. Evidence to me of the success of our
ix