Biotech crops introduce specific changes to a plant’s DNA to achieve beneficial characteristics (commonly called genetically modified organisms or GMOs).

In January 2014, an international meeting of 75 scientists from academia, government and industry discussed naturally occurring genetic changes in crops relative to those in GMOs. The discussion reviewed that humans have safely consumed foods from conventional crops that undergo continual genetic variation. The genetic changes needed to make a GMO are comparatively small to natural genetic changes, so it’s not surprising that foods and feeds from GMOs are as safe as those from conventional crops. The full journal article can be accessed here: bit.ly/2eeV6x9

Additional Information:

International Life Science Institute (ILSI) website: ilsi.org

This paper is from a conference co-sponsored by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in which their scientists, and other global experts, showed that plant genetics are very changeable to adapt to the environment and from breeding, dwarfing the genetic changes needed to make GMOs—which supports why GMOs are as safe as conventional crops.

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Why is this publication important to you?

This paper is from a conference co-sponsored by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in which their scientists, and other global experts, showed that plant genetics are very changeable to adapt to the environment and from breeding, dwarfing the genetic changes needed to make GMOs—which supports why GMOs are as safe as conventional crops.

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George G Harrigan, Denise Lundry, Suzanne Drury, Kristina Berman, Susan G Riordan, Margaret A Nemeth, William P Ridley and Kevin C Glenn.  2010. Natural variation in crop composition and the impact of transgenesis. Nature Biotechnology  28, 402–404 (2010) doi:10.1038/nbt0510-402. 
Venkatesh, T.V.; Harrigan, George G.; Perez, T.; Flint-Garcia, Sherry.  2015.  Compositional Assessments of Key Maize Populations: B73 Hybrids of the Nested Association Mapping Found Lines and Diverse Landrace Inbred Lines. J. Agric. Food Chem., 2015, 63 (21), pp 5282–5295.  
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