I. Environmental safety issues of transgenic plants 1. One of the main concerns of environmental safety assessment is “transgenic drift†Whether or not genetically modified plants will drift into the environment after the release of transgenic plants into the field will destroy the ecological environment and break the existing ecological population. balance. Whether the transgene will drift from engineering plants to wild plants is an important issue. Studies have shown that gene transfer often occurs naturally between cultivated rice and weed wild rice. Herbicides lose their effect if they are transferred to wild rice. In general, weeds will gradually develop resistance to herbicides, but it will take longer. It has been reported recently that the pollen of insect-resistant transgenic corn can cause the butterfly larvae to eat less, grow slowly, and even die. 2. The main concern for environmental safety assessment is “new resistance to pestsâ€. According to the World Bank (1998) report, some pests in the United States have found that cotton and corn with the bt gene are produced under both laboratory and field conditions. Resistance. To reduce the frequency of occurrence of pest resistance during the promotion of planting transgenic bt crops, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency adopted a strategy called “high-dose/refugeâ€, and this strategy can only be used as pests. The bt protein is only effective when it is recessive or partially recessive. However, the latest research shows that the resistance of European corn borer to bt protein in the laboratory is incompletely dominant. If the resistance gene performs in the field with the same performance in the laboratory, then this “high†The effectiveness of the dose/evacuation zone strategy will be greatly reduced. Therefore, in-depth and specific analysis should be conducted on the problem of pest resistance, and different effective strategies should be adopted for different situations. At the same time, consideration should also be given to the design of the transgene. For example, insect resistance genes with different insect resistance mechanisms can be introduced into the same plant to delay the cycle of insect resistance to the transgene. Resistance problems are in disease-resistant and herbicide-resistant plants. Also exists. II. Food safety of genetically modified plants 1. Whether edible genetically modified products will have an adverse effect on organisms The Organisation for Economic Cooperation (oecd) proposed in 1993 the principle of substantial equivalence in food safety assessments, ie if products produced by genetically modified plants are produced. It is considered safe if it has substantial equivalence with traditional products. For example, the virus-resistant coat protein gene of antiviral plants and their products and plant-infected products in the field are all coated with coat proteins, and it is believed that such products should be safe. If there is no substantial equivalence between the product produced by the transgenic plant and the traditional product, a strict safety assessment should be conducted. 2. How to conduct a rigorous safety evaluation The safety assessment mainly considers: (1) If the transgene product is toxic. For example, there are sufficient experimental data to show that bt insecticidal protein is only toxic to a few target insects, and it is absolutely safe for humans and animals: (2) Does a person have an allergic reaction after eating genetically modified products? There are many allergens under natural conditions. For example, when the American company introduced the 2s albumin gene in Brazil nuts into soybeans, although it increased the sulfur amino acids of soybeans, it was allergic to people. Therefore, such genetically modified soybeans were not approved for commercial production. In addition, consider the content of nutrients and anti-nutritional factors. So far, no case has been reported from the GM foods that have been commercialized in the world: GM foods have toxic side effects on humans. In accelerating the commercialization of genetically modified crops, we must pay sufficient attention to the safety of transgenic plants, but we must not slow down the development of transgenic technology and ignore or even deny the benefits of genetically modified products to humans.