UCS Position Paper: Pharmaceutical and Industrial Crops
Most of the genetically engineered (GE) crops currently on the market are food or feed crops that have been modified for agronomic purposes—to better repel pests or to be compatible with chemical pesticides. A new generation of crops is now being modified for different purposes—to produce medicines or industrial compounds such as plastics. Many of these substances are being produced in corn and other food crops visually indistinguishable from their non-industrial counterparts. Contamination of food crops with drugs or industrial chemicals could occur through seed mixing and cross-pollination. The potential contamination of food crops with the hundreds, if not thousands, of drugs or industrial compounds promised by this industry poses new and serious risks to the safety of the food system. Pharmaceutical and industrial compounds also pose potentially serious risks if released into the environment.

This paper details the position of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) regarding federal policy on crops genetically engineered to produce pharmaceutical and industrial compounds. After careful analysis, we have concluded that current U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations governing such crops, although stronger than they have been in the past, are still insufficiently stringent to assure the complete protection of the food supply in the United States. Moreover, the routes of contamination in existing commodity crop production systems are so numerous that even very strong regulatory systems may not be sufficient to prevent the contamination of the food system with crops genetically engineered to produce pharmaceutical and industrial compounds. Although it may be theoretically possible to design an adequate regulatory system, we believe it would be too complex to be implemented effectively by the USDA, the federal agency with primary authority over GE pharmaceutical and industrial crops.

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