NABC Report 17: Agricultural Biotechnology: Beyond Food and Energy to Health and the Environment
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Published 2005 by NABC.
This conference focused on issues such as plants as new sources of medicinals; bioremediation, phytosensing, and ecorestoration; gene-to-product development; and regulation, consumer acceptance, and risk management.
The products and processes addressed here are almost all at the research stage, whereas there is up to 15 years’ experience with commercial products in the enzyme and crop areas. Economic and environmental benefits of the products discussed could be large, e.g. plants engineered to produce low-cost medicinals with ease of scale-up stated as a unique advantage compared to traditional methods of manufacturing pharmaceuticals, plants that remediate soils in situ instead of wholesale excavation and landfill placement, and trees modified for lower lignin content so as to decrease processing costs while increasing pulp yields with less environmental impact. However, all have major not-yet-well-defined regulatory hurdles to navigate. This report provides cutting-edge information on a cross-section of these novel products and processes and includes open dialog on regulatory and related issues. It emerged that some academic scientists believe that biotechnology products are over-regulated, because regulation is based on process not trait.
All, including those from industry and the Biotechnology Industry Organization, support the necessity for regulation. The bottom line is cautious optimism for commercial use of these products; at this time there are few green lights, many yellow and some red.
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Recent Submissions
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The importance of stewardship in agricultural biotechnology
Phillips, Michael J. (NABC, 2005)The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), has introduced a training program laying out principles for confining plants that make pharmaceuticals and industrial products. Workshops dealing with compliance aspects ... -
Creating the Proper Environment for Acceptance of Agricultural Biotechnology
Jaffe, Gregory (NABC, 2005)The past 10 years have been extremely successful for the biotechnology industry. Products that are herbicide-tolerant or produce their own insecticide to control specific pests. These varieties have been widely adopted by ... -
The nature of change: Towards sensible regulation of transgenic crops based on lessons from plant breeding, biotechnology and genomics
Parrott, Wayne (NABC, 2005)Literature contains many suggestions that plant genomes are highly variable. One early indication was the discovery that maize inbreds differ in the number of rDNA copies. Until the advent of genetic engineering technology ... -
Panel discussion/ Q&A: Regulation, consumer acceptance, and risk management
Hoban, Thomas; Nolan, Canice; Bennett, Allan (NABC, 2005)Panelists expressed highly critical opinions of industry, government and universities regarding agricultural biotechnology and its products, especially those from cloned animals and PMPs from food crops, identified the ... -
Biological confinement of GEOs: Opportunities for reducing environmental risks?
Waddell, Kim (NABC, 2005)The 2000 federal government interagency review of regulatory oversight of biotechnology products revealed that ensuring confinement could become a regulatory requirement for approval of some transgenic organisms. In 2001, ... -
Liability prevention and biotechnology: A brief history of successful industrial stewardship
Redick, Thomas P (NABC, 2005)There are regulatory and liability hurdles standing in the way of launching a new transgenic product. Despite past successes, and the knowledge gained from failures and near misses, the road to future commercial success ... -
Regulating pharmaceutical plants: meeting the challenge
Smith, Cindy (NABC, 2005)USDA/APHIS has regulated transgenic organisms since 1987, and in 2002 established Biotechnology Regulatory Services (BRS) to place a renewed emphasis and priority on biotechnology. APHIS has authorized more than 10,000 ... -
Panel discussion/ Q&A: Gene-to-Product Development
Goldner, William; Day, Alex; Conway, Roger (NABC, 2005)There is a new initiative to assist in the navigation of regulatory requirements for specialty or minor crops: the Specialty Crops Regulatory Initiative. It should assist public-sector and small private companies in meeting ... -
Commercialization of a protein product from transgenic maize
Hood, Elizabeth E.; Woodard, Susan L. (NABC, 2005)Bovine trypsin can be synthesized in transgenic maize, nut lack of public acceptance is the major barrier to producing pharmaceutical or industrial products in plants. Response to this public distrust has driven current ... -
Understanding gene function and control in lignin formation in wood
Chiang, Vincent L. (NABC, 2005)Genetic engineering can be used to improve wood-pulping and bleaching efficiencies, including the production of transgenic trees of low lignin content.