Regulatory decisions on GM crops slow

International News on Fats, Oils and Related Materials : INFORM, September, 2006 by Anonymous

Gregory Jaffe, a researcher with the Center for Science in the Public Interest based in Washington, D.C., USA, has conducted a research of eleven years of information regarding the regulation of genetically modified (GM) crops approved for growth in the United States, and came to the conclusion the time to reach a regulatory decision has more than doubled over the past five years. The source of the information was the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

His analyses have been reported in the July issue of Nature Biotechnology (24:748-749, 2006).

Jaffe notes that the speed of regulatory decision-making is an important constraint on the ability of industry to...