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Unjustified and impractical legal requirements are stopping genetically engineered crops from saving millions from starvation and malnutrition, says Ingo Potrykus.
Genetically engineered crops could save many millions from starvation and malnutrition - if they can be freed from excessive regulation. That is the conclusion I've reached from my experience over the past 11 years chairing the Golden Rice Humanitarian project (www.goldenrice.org), and after a meeting at the Vatican last year on transgenic plants for food security in the context of development1.
Golden rice will probably reach the market in 2012. It was ready in the lab by 1999. This lag is because of the regulatory differentiation of genetic engineering from other, traditional methods of crop improvement. The discrimination is scientifically unjustified. It is wasting resources and stopping many potentially transformative crops such as golden rice making the leap from lab to plate.
More defensible - on scientific and humanitarian grounds - and more practical would be for new genetically modified crops to be regulated, not according to how they are bred, but according to their novelty, as are new drugs. All traits, however introduced, should be classified by their putative risk or benefit to the consumer and to the environment. Researchers and regulators could then focus on cases in which risks are real and fast-track crops urgently needed in the developing world.
Golden rice is a series of varieties modified with two genes (phytoene synthase and phytoene double-desaturase)...