Sep 18, 2006

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International Biosafety Symposium in Jeju, South Korea

“Findings from biosafety research are attracting more attention.”

Every two years, the International Biosafety Symposium brings together experts on biological safety research from all over the world, this time on the island of Jeju in South Korea. This will be the ninth time that scientists will be presenting the latest research results and discussing the conclusions that can be drawn from them for the risk assessment of genetically modified plants. – GMO Safety spoke to Dr. Joachim Schiemann, President of the International Society for Biosafety Research (ISBR).

GMO Safety: In a few days, the ninth Biosafety Symposium will begin, this time on the island of Jeju in South Korea. Dr. Schiemann, you have been involved in this since 1992, when the second of these symposia was held in Goslar, Germany. When you look back over the past fourteen years – what have been the developments in biosafety research and where will the focus lie in future?

Joachim Schiemann: At the first symposia, the focus was still on research in the laboratory. Then came research accompanying experimental field trials, and at the moment we have intensive commercial exploitation of genetically modified crops at the international level – which brings with it new research questions. But transgenic insects and fish have also been topics of biosafety research in the past – and were represented at our symposia. In future we will be focusing more on long-term impacts. After all, we now have large-scale cultivation of transgenic crops and can obtain new findings from monitoring. We will also be looking at new applications, like molecular pharming. And we need improved methods for safety assessment. One of the reasons for this is that we need to preserve the balance between safety on the one hand and regulatory hurdles on the other. New, improved experimental methods could help reduce regulatory outlay.

GMO Safety: What about the current importance of safety and accompanying research as a whole at the global level? Are there regional or national differences – including with respect to financing?

Joachim Schiemann: Of course, there are national differences in terms of the importance given to biosafety research. But the general trend shows that biological safety research has a high status everywhere, not only in Germany, but in Europe as well. There are similar programmes in the US and Israel. Our seventh symposium in Beijing led to a sharp rise in biological safety in China. What is important, is that this research and its results are discussed at the international level – something our symposia are of course contributing towards. However, in some countries and regions a certain amount of ignorance can be observed when it comes to biosafety research results. This is why it is so important for the voice of biosafety research to be clearly audible.

GMO Safety: So it is not necessarily the case that biosafety research is promoted more in regions like Europe, where the public continues to be sceptical of green genetic engineering, than in e.g. North America, where there is a relatively high level of acceptance?

Joachim Schiemann: No, that is not the case. Safety research is not there to find arguments against a lack of acceptance. The objective is to introduce and use this new technology within a safe framework. That is why countries like the US and China are promoting biosafety research so intensively.

GMO Safety: The topic of this year’s symposium is “Biosafety research and environmental risk assessment”. How and to what extent do findings from biosafety research actually find their way into environmental risk assessment?

Joachim Schiemann: Biosafety research is not an end in itself – it provides an important basis for risk assessment. The way in which we have arranged the different sections of the symposium is designed to make this clear. The question of what one absolutely needs to know for a risk assessment, and what is interesting, but not necessary (‘need to know’ versus ‘nice to know’) has been discussed many times at our symposia. This is because it is a question that needs to be answered both in the area of research and in the area of risk assessment and risk management. In doing so, we also need to describe the uncertainties that we still have regarding certain aspects and the areas where our current knowledge does not go far enough. The type of risk management appropriate in such cases depends on the degree of uncertainty that a society is willing to accept.

GMO Safety: In your opinion, has biosafety research influenced green genetic engineering as a whole, e.g. industry and seed producers, with regard to their strategies for developing new genetically modified varieties?

Joachim Schiemann: In my opinion, this is another area in which developments have been positive. I have the impression that findings from biosafety research are increasingly being taken into account when new concepts or new constructs are developed. It is very important that developers of technology think about e.g. what vectors or transformation methods they intend to use right from the start, before the very first step. And if, later on, prototypes need to be selected from the transformed plants, with the aim of working towards commercial exploitation, then biosafety aspects should play an important role at this stage as well.

Unlike ten years ago, we now have positive developments to report in this area. I am thinking, for example, of marker gene, elimination, or – in specific cases – biological containment. And, something that I believe is very important: we are discussing intensively the issue of precision biotechnology, in other words new, improved methods for working more precisely and accurately at the molecular biological level. At the end of the day, these methods may also reduce the regulatory hurdles, both for applicants and for the scientists responsible for risk assessment.

GMO Safety: To what extent do newer developments in genetically modified plants play a role in current biosafety research?

Joachim Schiemann: A significant part of biosafety research deals with overarching questions, which are usually independent of the newly transferred trait. These include e.g. horizontal gene transfer and the persistence of DNA or certain proteins in the soil. On the other hand, there are also research questions involving a specific new trait or the interaction between this trait and the environment. Of course, we are now interested in the plants of the second and third generation, i.e. plants with modified components. Although this may become relevant only in the future, we are already looking at the safety-related questions this might give rise to. With new plants used to produce industrial and pharmaceutical products, we may, in some cases, be dealing with completely new safety requirements.

GMO Safety: Four years ago the symposium was held in Beijing. Now the Biosafety Symposium 2006 is returning to Asia. Is this pointing the way to the future importance of green genetic engineering in Asia?

Joachim Schiemann: We chose the locations for our symposia based on the importance of biotechnology, especially green genetic engineering and biosafety research, in those locations. Four years ago, we deliberately went to China – and it paid off: our symposium has had a lasting influence on the debate in China and gave the promotion of biosafety research a powerful boost. This year we chose Korea – partly because we had a very good offer from there, and partly because there is a lot of interest in biosafety research. The Koreans are currently developing new regulatory structures and setting up new research fields. In the week before the symposium I will be visiting a number of institutes and giving various presentations as an “honorary scientist” of the Rural Development Agency. I am happy that the symposium is giving us the opportunity to make these contacts in Korea.

GMO Safety: Thank you for talking to us.