Possible Health Aspects of Horizontal Transfer of Microbial Transgenes Present in Genetically Modified Crops

Long before the first introduction of GM crops, international organizations like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Health Organization (WHO), and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), had been promoting international consensus on how to assess the safety of such crops. An internationally harmonized approach of comparative safety assessment was thus formulated in which the GM crop is compared to a conventional counterpart with a known history of safe use . In 2003, the activities on international consensus building culminated into the establishment of Codex Alimentarius' guidelines on the conduct of safety assessment of foods derived from genetically modified plants and micro-organisms. Codex Alimentarius standards, guidelines, and other documents are important because they serve as reference for international trade disputes over the safety of internationally traded foods under the international agreement on sanitary and phytosanitary standards (SPS). Horizontal gene transfer is one of the important issues addressed during the safety assessment of GM crops. In the Codex Alimentarius guidelines, the focus of the assessment of this topic is restricted to the potential transfer of antibiotic resistance marker genes and the consequences thereof. The European Food Safety Authority’s Scientific Panel on Genetically Modified Organisms recently issued an opinion on antibiotic resistance genes.This opinion, among others, proposed a categorization of the antibiotic resistance genes into three categories based on the clinical importance of the antibiotic, the natural prevalence of resistance to the same antibiotic in nature, and the likelihood of transfer. "Source":[ http://www.isb.vt.edu/news/2006/news06.Feb.htm].

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