Trends in GE Food/Feed Safety Research: Analysis of Potential Conflict of Interests

Background and scope Genetically Engineered (GE) crops have been the most rapidly adopted agricultural technology in mankind history, as evidenced by a 100-fold increase from 1.7 to 181.5 million hectares globally cultivated between 1996 and 2014 1. Their environmental and economic benefits for farmers, farm workers, and society have been extensively reported elsewhere 2,3. Although GE crops are not inherently riskier than non-GE crops 4 , the safety of these plants is a key aspect of the rigorous regulatory processes leading to their approval for environmental release and/or food/feed purposes. It is also one of the main topics addressed in the public debate associated with GE crops. Consequently, the safety of GE crops has been an object of intense research and study over the past 20 years 5. In terms of food/feed safety, GE crops are thoroughly assessed for potential toxicity, allergenicity potential, and possible unintended effects among other factors that might result from the expression of foreign proteins driven by genes inserted into a host plant. Detailed compositional analyses of nutrients and antinutrients specific to individual plant transformation events in different crops and the nutrition and health of animals fed on GE crops or feedstuffs are also evaluated extensively on a regular basis 6. The scientific literature produced over the years on GE crop safety is extensive, and it has reported the existence of more than 31,848 reports up to 2006 6. Nevertheless, the vast majority of these reports do not represent original research papers published in scientific journals, but rather abstracts, notes, opinions, and commentaries not subjected to peer review, and scientific reviews. Further, only 237 of those reports dealt with GE food/feed safety matters, including detection, compositional, toxicological, and nutritional analyses 7. Recently, a list of scientific papers on GE crop safety has been compiled, analyzing the distribution and composition of the literature published from 2002 to October 2012. A total of 1,783 reports, including original research papers, reviews, relevant opinions, commentaries, and reports addressing all the major issues that emerged in the debate on GE crops, were classified, and 770 out of the total were related to GE food/feed safety issues. The main conclusion was that scientific research conducted thus far has not detected any significant hazards directly associated with the use of GE crops 5. In this context, GE crop safety scientific literature is sometimes questioned or even plainly disregarded in the public debate, either …