They are always evolving. The soul of the scientific process is challenge and revision based on new information. Three years ago sound science indicated FDA should approve the diet drug Phen-Fen. Last year new information, new sound science, caused FDA to withdraw the drug from the market. Food safety policy should be based on the best data and the best science but, in the end, policy is more than science.
Policy represents a choice among competing interests and values.
Policy makers must balance industry's need to bring new products to market and thereby increase shareholder value and a farmer's desire to increase yield against the public's concern that this new technology has not been sufficiently examined for safety and holds no benefit for consumers. Public confidence in genetically engineered foods has been further eroded by the sense that government has been too sensitive to the needs of industry and too reluctant to invest public funds in adequate regulation. We all have to live with the impact of decisions made in 1992 about how to regulate this technology and what standards to set. It is difficult to persuade the public that in that case our government put food safety considerations ahead of competitiveness in an emerging international market. During FDA's consideration of an appropriate regulatory structure for GE foods, officials of the Agency had to acknowledge and deal with the fact that a decision to require prior approval of GE foods would suck up huge amounts of the Agency's very limited resources.