The regulators' task is not simply to allow research to go ahead unless potential hazards are obvious. It is to consider risks that could come to light later. All proposals have to survive positive vetting of this sort before they are sanctioned. When plants fertilise, cross-fertilise and hybridise in the wild, large numbers of genes are transferred in a haphazard fashion. Even traditional plant breeders, who harness these processes, cannot avoid mobilising many more genes than they wish.
Biotechnology allows individual genes to be moved with precisionfrom one plant to another.
It is much easier to know how one gene will work in its new setting. The likelihood of unexpected consequences, and the margin of error, are correspondingly reduced. There is a chance, however remote, that a gene introduced into a particular plant at one time and location might have adverse consequences if it eventually gets into to another plant distant in space and time. Given the astronomical amount of random gene transfer which occurs throughout the biosphere, such extreme caution is unwarranted. The problems with the genetic revolution developed right from the start.