Biotech Updates

ILSI Editor's Choice: Articles on Safety of GE Stacks

July 3, 2013

The International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) published two editorial articles answering the following questions on food and feed safety of GE stacks: (1) does incorporation of more than one event increase genomic instability, and (2) can potential interactions between the products of the combined events impact safety?

The first paper focuses on the potential of transgenes to alter genome stability and the potential risks to food and feed safety associated with genome instability. Download the article at http://www.ilsi.org/FoodBioTech/Publications/Plant%20Physiol.-2012-Weber-1842-53.pdf.

The second paper deals with the potential interactions between events and their products combined in a stack, reviews the basic principles of plant breeding and its history of safe use, and extends these principles to the feed and food safety of events combined through the same processes used in conventional breeding of non-GE plants. The article is available at http://www.ilsi.org/FoodBioTech/Publications/Breeding%20Stacks-2013-Steiner-Plant%20Physiol.pdf.