Farmers planted nearly 180 million hectares of GE crops worldwide in 2015, the committee reported. PIXABAY, JCESAR2015Members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine today (May 17) released a study examining more than three decades of research and commentaries on the environmental, health, social, and economic impacts of genetically engineered (GE) crops. The study authors, which make up the Committee on Genetically Engineered Crops: Past Experience and Future Prospects, also included details on the funders of a given study analyzed and whether it had been peer-reviewed. “This report is intended to provide an independent, objective examination of what has been learned since the introduction of GE crops, based on current evidence,” the group said in a statement.
By and large, the authors noted, it’s too soon to broadly declare the positive and negative impacts of any one GE crop, let alone all of them—which is, of course, what consumers and policy makers asked the group to do.
“We received impassioned requests to give the public a simple, general, authoritative answer about GE crops,” the authors wrote in their report. “Given the complexity of GE issues, we did not see that as appropriate.”
“Once you or I conclude that GE crops are good or bad we look for more evidence to support our previous conclusion,” committee chair Fred Gould, a professor of entomology at North Carolina State University, said in a press release. “I hope that people looking for our report to support ...
