A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ENVIRONMENT RISK ASSESSMENT GUIDELINES FOR GENETICALLY ENGINEERED PLANTS OF DEVELOPING AND DEVELOPED COUNTRIES INCLUDING BANGLADESH

Abstract

Genetically Engineered (GE) plants are the demand of time for increased need of food. The regulation system, followed from the development of a GE plant to its release into the environment is categorized into separate stages for maintaining the proper biosafety including Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA). ERA identifies potential risks and its impacts through science based evaluation process where it follows a case by case study. All the countries dealing with GE plants follow specific guidelines to conduct a successful ERA. In this study, ERA guidelines of 4 developing and 4 developed countries including Bangladesh were compared in terms of required data and information against ten criteria. Surprisingly, an adequate amount of data and information requirements (e.g. if the intended modification has been achieved or not, growth habit of GE plants, potential adverse effects on the human health etc.) matched between all the countries. However, a few differences of data requirement such as agronomic conventions of non-transformed plants, clear description of experimental procedures followed etc. were also observed in the study. Moreover, the result indicates that only a few countries provide instructions on the quality of the data used for ERA. Thus, if the similarities are recognized in a more framed manner then the approval pathway of GE plants can be shared.