The symposium was unique in that substantial funding was provided by U.S. and EU government agencies for a North-South Workshop that included participants from 27 developing countries. In all, 45 countries were represented. The meeting also featured a lively public session for dialogue between French citizens and biosafety researchers, and a position paper by Dr. Marion Guillou, President-Director-General of INRA (Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique).

Plenary talks covered the following topics:

• Commercialization and biosafety aspects of Bt and other insecticidal crops
• Biosafety aspects of virus-resistant transgenic crops
• Biosafety issues of the next generation of transgenic crops, including "pharma" crops
• Strategies for biological confinement in plants
• Effects of GM plants and GM inoculants on microbial communities
• Commercialization and biosafety aspects of GM fish
• Challenges for biosafety research in developing countries—a North-South Workshop
• GMO regulations world wide
• Approaches to discourse and communication on biosafety issues

This format offered a fertile environment for discussion and debate about current issues in environmental biosafety research. Several recurring themes emerged from the talks, posters, question-and-answer sessions, and workshops, as summarized below.

1) How can scientific research inform biosafety decisions?
Governmental regulators need clear answers to questions they are facing on a daily basis, but the empirical research needed to address these questions is often expensive, time-consuming, and/or inconclusive. Regulators and industry representatives are often expected to distinguish between what is "nice to know" and what they really need to know as soon as possible. The challenges of getting reliable answers are often magnified by inadequate scientific literature and a lack of scientific expertise, especially in developing countries. Also, as David Quist pointed out in a poster, priorities that are adopted by regulators can constrain the types of questions that are pursued by the scientific community, mainly through available funding, and this could be a disincentive to exploring unanticipated questions related to biosafety. Symposium participants offered suggestions for how to evaluate research priorities, how to form interdisciplinary research teams and communication networks, and how specific findings can be interpreted in the context of formal risk assessments. A lot of constructive discussion focused on the various goals and expectations of scientists, government agencies, the biotech industry, and the public.

2) How reliable are "negative results" indicating no environmental risks of GMOs?
Many presentations provided evidence that currently grown transgenic crops have no known negative effects on non-target species, wild relatives of crop plants, or microbial communities. Marc Fuchs stated that the benefits of virus-resistant transgenic squash far outweigh risks to the environment, and William Muir concluded that transgenic zebrafish sold as pets (GloFish^TM) are not expected to be hazardous if they are introduced into aquatic habitats.

While these findings are welcome, researchers also acknowledged that all research methods have certain limitations. Ecological studies that are limited to a few small field sites and/or just a few field seasons could easily miss detecting effects of GMOs that occur over larger geographic scales and timeframes. Some questions, such as the potential for insects to evolve resistance to Bt crops, will only be resolved by post-commercial research and monitoring. Many speakers offered suggestions about how to weigh findings from laboratory experiments, field studies, and modeling exercises, each of which has intrinsic advantages and disadvantages. In addition, several speakers reminded the audience of statistical tests that should be used to minimize the chance of erroneously concluding that there is no effect of a GMO in a given study when in fact there is.

3) How can regulators in developing countries acquire scientific information for environmental risk assessment?
The symposium’s focus on developing and less-industrialized countries highlighted the economic, environmental, and health benefits that are expected to accrue from GMOs within the next decade. At the same time, the unique challenges of carrying out science-based risk assessments in these countries were also emphasized, especially in light of limited resources and emerging requirements of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.

A number of talks presented advances in biosafety research in China, including Baorong Lu’s studies of gene flow in rice and Zhen Zhu’s work on insect-resistant rice. As a more detailed example, Kongming Wu discussed research on the refuge/high dose strategy for delaying of the evolution of resistance in target pests of Bt cotton, which was deregulated in China in 1997. For cotton bollworm, alternate host crops such as wheat, soybean, peanut, and corn can provide refuges for the maintenance of susceptible insects throughout the growing season. However, he reported that some larvae survive on Bt cotton in the late part of the growing season, indicating that a high dose is not being achieved. Also, Wu detected bollworms that were resistant to Cry1Ac at a frequency of ~0.00059 in Shandong Province. It is not known whether this frequency will increase, but yearly resistance monitoring has not detected a breakdown of susceptibility so far. These studies and others like them are crucial for understanding the long-term efficacy of Bt crops.

4) How far have we come and where is the field going?
Speakers often reflected on the accomplishments of the biosafety research community, especially in terms of peer-reviewed publications and capacity building. For example, Kornelia Smalla summarized a decade of research on soil microbial communities in which the effects of GM crops were found to be negligible compared to effects of soil type, plant species, plant developmental stages, or year-to-year variation. Charles Kessler noted that the European Community spent around US$100 million on biosafety research from 1985-2000. He stated that this research did not identify new risks of GM technology beyond the usual uncertainties and outcomes of conventional plant breeding.

Allison Snow
Ohio State University,
Columbus, OH
snow.1@osu.edu