Biodiversity Literature Repository
Published October 17, 2012 | Version v1
Journal article Open

A framework for a European network for a systematic environmental impact assessment of genetically modified organisms (GMO)

Creators

  • 1. 1. ZALF, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research, Institute of Land Use Systems, Eberswalder Str. 84, 15374 Müncheberg // 2. BfN; Federal A, Müncheberg, Germany
  • 2. , Florsheim, Germany
  • 3. Center for Agro-food Economy and Development-CREDA-UPC-IRTA; Parc Mediterrani de la Tecnologia- ESAB Building; C/ Esteve Terrades 8; 08860 Castelldefe, Castelldefels (Barcelona), Spain
  • 4. GenØk; Centre for Biosafety, Science Park, 9294 Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway
  • 5. ETH; Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Institute of Integrative Biology, Universitaetstr. 16; 8092 Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
  • 6. University of Vechta; Chair of Landscape Ecology; Driverstr. 22; 49377 Vechta, Vechta, Germany
  • 7. Aarhus University; Department of Agroecology; Blichers Allé 20; 8830 Tjele, Tjele, Denmark
  • 8. ZALF, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research, Institute of Land Use Systems, Eberswalder Str. 84, 15374 Müncheberg, Müncheberg, Germany
  • 9. GenØk; Centre for Biosafety, Science Park, 9294 Tromsø // Institute of Pharmacy, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway
  • 10. Plant Protection Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; Department of Ecotoxicology and Environmental Analysis; Herman Otto ut 15; 1022 Budap, Budapest, Hungary
  • 11. TUD; Technische Universität Dresden; Faculty of Geo-, Forest- and Hydroscience; Helmholtzstr. 10; 01069 Dresden, Dresden, Germany
  • 12. FiBL; Forschungsinstitut für Biologischen Landbau; Ackerstr. 1; 5070 Frick, Frick, Switzerland
  • 13. ENSSER, Postfach 1102, 15832 Rangsdorf, Rangsdorf, Germany
  • 14. Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
  • 15. ESRC Cesagen, Lancaster University; Sociology; Bailrigg; LA1 4YD Lancaster, Lancaster, United Kingdom
  • 16. The University of Edinburgh; School of GeoSciences; Drummond Street; Edinburgh EH8 9XP, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
  • 17. EAS; Eurofins Agroscience Services GmbH; Eutinger Strasse 24; 75223 Niefern-Öschelbronn, Niefern-Öschelbronn, Germany
  • 18. UFZ - Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Halle, Germany
  • 19. Plant Protection Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
  • 20. DIN; Deutsches Institut für Normung; Burggrafenstr. 6; 10787 Berlin, Berlin, Germany
  • 21. Lindenweg 12; 49393 Lohne-Ehrendorf, Lohne-Ehrendorf, Germany
  • 22. UDP; University of Firenze; Department of Evolutionary Biology; Via Romana 17 50125 Firenze, Firenze, Italy
  • 23. UDP; University of Pisa; Department of Crop Plant Biology; Via del Borghetto 80, 56124 Pisa, Pisa, Italy
  • 24. JSI; Josef Stefan Institute; Department of Knowledge Technologies; Jamova 39; 1000 Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
  • 25. University of Copenhagen; Faculty of Life Sciences; Rolighedsvej 23; 1958 Frederiksberg C, Frederiksberg C, Denmark
  • 26. BfN; Federal Agency for Nature Conservation; Division GMO-Regulation, Biosafety; Konstantinstr. 110; 53179 Bonn, Bonn, Germany
  • 27. VU University, Amsterdam; Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences; De Boelelaan 1085; 1081 HV Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • 28. University Bremen, Bremen, Germany
  • 29. CRIIGEN; University of Caen; IBFA Laboratory of Biochemistry; Esplanade de la Paix ; 14032 Caen, Caen, France
  • 30. Statistics Norway, Oslo, Norway
  • 31. University of Vechta; Chair of Landscape Ecology, Vechta, Germany
  • 32. UKZUZ; Central Institute for Supervising and Testing in Agriculture; Foreign Relations and EU Department, Brno, Czech Republic
  • 33. ZALF, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research, Institute of Land Use Systems, Müncheberg, Germany

Description

The assessment of the impacts of growing genetically modified (GM) crops remains a major political and scientific challenge in Europe. Concerns have been raised by the evidence of adverse and unexpected environmental effects and differing opinions on the outcomes of environmental risk assessments (ERA). The current regulatory system is hampered by insufficiently developed methods for GM crop safety testing and introduction studies. Improvement to the regulatory system needs to address the lack of well designed GM crop monitoring frameworks, professional and financial conflicts of interest within the ERA research and testing community, weaknesses in consideration of stakeholder interests and specific regional conditions, and the lack of comprehensive assessments that address the environmental and socio-economic risk assessment interface. To address these challenges, we propose a European Network for systematic GMO impact assessment (ENSyGMO) with the aim directly to enhance ERA and post-market environmental monitoring (PMEM) of GM crops, to harmonize and ultimately secure the long-term socio-political impact of the ERA process and the PMEM in the EU. These goals would be achieved with a multi-dimensional and multi-sector approach to GM crop impact assessment, targeting the variability and complexity of the EU agro-environment and the relationship with relevant socio-economic factors. Specifically, we propose to develop and apply methodologies for both indicator and field site selection for GM crop ERA and PMEM, embedded in an EU-wide typology of agro-environments. These methodologies should be applied in a pan-European field testing network using GM crops. The design of the field experiments and the sampling methodology at these field sites should follow specific hypotheses on GM crop effects and use state-of-the art sampling, statistics and modelling approaches. To address public concerns and create confidence in the ENSyGMO results, actors with relevant specialist knowledge from various sectors should be involved.

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