Who ensures that GE crops can be safely eaten by humans or animals?
The FDA is responsible for ensuring that all the foods we eat are safe. However, the FDA does not have any special legal authority to approve GE crops before they are commercialized. Thus, FDA regulates GE food and feed crops through a voluntary notification process rather than by a mandatory pre-market approval process. In that voluntary process, the developer of a GE crop submits to FDA a summary of data that shows that the GE crop is substantially equivalent to its traditionally bred counterpart. FDA reviews the submitted data and alerts the developer to any concerns it has about the developer’s food safety assessment. A recent report of FDA’s oversight of GE food safety by CSPI found that the process is not as rigorous or as independent as it should be, and that FDA often does not get all of the data it needs to perform a well-informed safety review Plugging Holes in the Biotech Safety Net.
