The lack of an export market for many of these food crops may leave biosafety testing outside of Codex. Equally many of these food crops are not consumed in developed countries and so they would not have been tested for human consumption in countries with the capacity for biosafety evaluation. For the poorest developing countries, biosafety regulatory systems are at best rudimentary If we succeed in getting increased public and private sector attention to developing country food crops then there will be a need to ensure independent testing with regard to human health and environmental safety. We cannot ignore safety concerns. While transgenic crops may not be present in most developing countries, world media attention has ensured that the safety concerns have been well publicized.
Biotechnology is one tool in our arsenal for feeding the world in the future.
We have fallen behind in educating consumers about the potential of biotechnology and in reassuring them about safety concerns. We could take some lessons from the pharmaceutical sector where new drugs are introduced on a regular basis. I would submit that no new drug is absent all risk but careful evaluation through extensive clinical trials indicates that the benefits outweigh the risks when taken under prescribed conditions. There were 6.5 million cases of food poisoning in the United States of America in 1992, resulting in 9,000 fatalities. If we turn our backs on modern biotechnology then instead of reducing malnutrition and micronutrient deficiency we could move in the opposite direction.