Response to Bagavathiannan and Van Acker's “Transgenes and national boundaries – The need for international regulations”: Biotechnology developers and regulators already consider transgene movement across national boundaries and the environmental risks posed by adventitious presence of unapproved events are overstated

Open Access Option

Free access article

Issue		Environ. Biosafety Res. Volume 8, Number 3, July-September 2009


Page(s)		149 - 151
Section		Roundtable
DOI		10.1051/ebr/2009010
Published online		24 September 2009

Environ. Biosafety Res. 8 (2009) 149-151
DOI: 10.1051/ebr/2009010

Response to Bagavathiannan and Van Acker's “Transgenes and national boundaries – The need for international regulations”: Biotechnology developers and regulators already consider transgene movement across national boundaries and the environmental risks posed by adventitious presence of unapproved events are overstated

Thomas E. Nickson¹ and Alan F. Raybould²

¹ Monsanto Company, St. Louis, MO, 63167, USA
² Syngenta, Jealott's Hill International Research Centre, Bracknell, RG42 6EY, UK

Received June 17, 2009; Accepted July 13, 2009; published online 24 September 2009

Abstract - Bagavathiannan and Van Acker propose greater international cooperation and information sharing in risk assessment for biotechnology-derived crops because pollen- and seed-mediated gene flow across political boundaries may lead to the adventitious presence of unapproved transgenes at sites along the borders of neighboring countries. However, they fail to convince us that something is wrong with the current situation and provide no details of how it could be improved.

Key words: gene flow / alfalfa / international regulatory policy / environmental risk

Corresponding author: thomas.nickson@monsanto.com

© ISBR, EDP Sciences 2009

What is OpenURL?

The OpenURL standard is a protocol for transmission of metadata describing the resource that you wish to access. An OpenURL link contains article metadata and directs it to the OpenURL server of your choice. The OpenURL server can provide access to the resource and also offer complementary services (specific search engine, export of references...). The OpenURL link can be generated by different means.

If your librarian has set up your subscription with an OpenURL resolver, OpenURL links appear automatically on the abstract pages.
You can define your own OpenURL resolver with your EDPS Account. In this case your choice will be given priority over that of your library.
You can use an add-on for your browser (Firefox or I.E.) to display OpenURL links on a page (see http://www.openly.com/openurlref/). You should disable this module if you wish to use the OpenURL server that you or your library have defined.