Consequences, Opportunities and Challenges of Modern Biotechnology for Europe

Modern biotechnology products and processes are an integral part of the EU economy, mainly in manufacturing, including pharmaceuticals, agro-food and healthcare. While some products are not recognizable to the broader public (e.g. the use of genetic markers in livestock breeding), others are used on a daily basis (detergents with enzymes, recombinant insulin) or have become subject of public discussion (e.g. genetically modified crops). Modern bioetchnology contributes significantly to the achievement of major EU polciy objectives.JRC.J.5-Agriculture and Life Sciences in the Econom

Low-Level Presence of New GM Crops: An Issue on the Rise for Countries Where They Lack Approval

This study addresses a new issue in the commercialisation of GM crops, namely the occurrence of traces ¿ or "low-level presence" (LLP) ¿ of nationally unapproved GM material in crop imports. The commercialisation of GM crops is a regulated activity and countries have different authorisation procedures. Hence new GM crops are not approved simultaneously. This "asynchronous approval" (AA), in combination with a "zero tolerance" policy to¬wards LLP, is of growing con¬cern for its potential economic impact on international trade. To forecast the future evolution of this issue, we compiled a global pipeline of GM crops that may be commercialised by 2015. This pipeline is analysed by crop and likely LLP scenarios are discussed. While currently there are around 30 commercial GM crops with different transgenic "events" worldwide, it is expected that by 2015 there will be over 120. Given that already with 30 events problems of LLP have occurred, these issues are likely to intensify when more events become available in more countries.JRC.DDG.J.5-Agriculture and Life Sciences in the Econom

A Review of the World's Commercial Pipeline of GM Crops and Implications for Asynchronous Approvals and Trade

Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), Institute for Prospective Tech¬nological Studies (IPTS). The panel gathered GM technology developers (private and public), regulators and stakeholders involved in the commercialisation of GM crops worldwide. The main objective is to compile a world-wide pipeline of new GM crops that are to being commercialised in the short to medium term. This commercial pipeline of new GM crops will be analysed in view of asynchronous approval of GM crops by the EU and its trading partners that may result in restrictions in access to certain commodity markets (including the possible impacts for the farming sector, commodity traders and the food and feed industry). In this context it is paramount to obtain a clearer overview of new GMOs that are in the global commercial pipeline for relevant crops. Once such an overview has been compiled, this information can be used as input for more detailed economic evaluations to assess and quantify the potential impact of asynchro¬nous approval of GMOs and, thus, to help policy makers understand the scope of the problem and the need for action. While the main emphasis is on market access, the compilation of the pipeline will also serve to discuss the relative position of the EU in the R&D of key agricultural crops.JRC.J.5-Agriculture and Life Sciences in the Econom