The planned introduction of genetically engineered organisms: ecological considerations and recommendations

The ecological and evolutionary aspects of planned introductions of transgenic organisms into the environment are considered in this report. The authors support the timely development of environmentally sound products, such as improved agricultural varieties, fertilizers, pest control agents, and microorganisms for waste treatment, through the use of advanced biotechnology within the context of a scientifically based regulatory policy that encourages innovation without compromising sound environmental management. Economic, social, and ethical concerns also must be weighed along with strictly ecological and evolutionary considerations, but these other issues are beyond the scope of this report. Ecological oversight of planned introductions should be directed at promoting effectiveness while guarding against potential problems. The diversity of organisms that will be modified, functions that will be engineered, and environments that will receive altered organisms makes ecological risk evaluation complex. While we cannot now recommend the complete exemption of specific organisms or traits from regulatory oversight, we support and will continue to assist in the development of methods for scaling the level of oversight needed for individual cases according to objective, scientific criteria, with a goal of minimizing unnecessary regulatory burdens. In this report, we provide a preliminary set of specific criteria for the scaling of regulatory oversight. Genetically engineered organisms should be evaluated and regulated according to their biological properties (phenotypes), rather than according to the genetic techniques used to produce them. Nonetheless, because many novel combinations of properties can be achieved only by molecular and cellular techniques, products of these techniques may often be subjected to greater scrutiny than the products of traditional techniques. Although the capability to produce precise genetic alterations increases confidence that unintended changes in the genome have not occurred, precise genetic characterization does not ensure that all ecologically important aspects of the phenotype can be predicted for the environments into which an organism will be introduced. Many important scientific issues must be considered in evaluating the potential ecological consequences of the planned introduction of genetically engineered organisms into the environment. These include survival and reproduction of the introduced organism, interactions wi