What overarching scientific principles should be applied to the safety and nutritional assessment?
Experience throughout the world has led to the identification of a number of common scientific principles currently used in safety and nutritional assessment. The existing food supply has a long history of safe use, even though some foods are not safe for some individuals and many foods contain substances that would present health concerns if they were present above accepted levels. Most foods derived using recombinant DNA techniques are obtained from traditional crops that have usually been modified to exhibit one or a few well-defined traits. The knowledge and experience gained in the use of traditional crops is an important component in the safety assessment of foods derived from such plants. Safety assessment of whole foods and many complex food ingredients requires use of an approach that differs from the strategy used to assess safety of single, well-defined chemicals, such as food additives, pesticides and contaminants. The approach for whole foods is case-by-case, based on an e
