Safety management regulation and practice standards on living modified organism (LMO) facilities under the Ministry of Environment

Living modified organisms (LMOs) in South Korea are managed under the Transboundary Movement, Etc. of LMOs Act, the domestic implementation law of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. The Ministry of Environment (MOE) oversees the risk review and safety management of LMOs for environmental remediation, and consultative review on the risk posed to the natural ecosystem by LMOs for other purposes. In particular, the MOE operates a risk assessment institute to promote scientific and systematic safety management by standardizing an evaluation criterion for the relevant LMOs. These must be established according to the standards of the LMOs Act. In this review, a new technique for reliable management of the LMO facility, including a confined field, was proposed to comply with the safety standards of the MOE. Based on the analysis of the LMOs Act and the practices of established LMO facilities, potential facility management directions under the MOE were discussed from the perspectives of the facility, cultivation, waste, record, and education. These suggestions can help physically isolate LMO facilities and prevent the unintentional release of LMOs, thus helping avoid hybridization between LMOs and non-LMOs. In addition, a monitoring system was proposed to prevent transgene escape and subsequent hybridization with the wild relatives of LMOs. These proposals can be widely used for safety management when researching the development and commercialization of LMOs at facilities under the MOE.