Safety of genetically engineered foods is still dubious

EDITOR—The editorial by Derek Burke, former chair of the government's Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (ACRE), certainly had a reassuring tone about it, but it also suffered from a fairly major dose of complacency.1 It would be surprising if a man who had for nine years chaired the committee that authorised the release of genetically engineered seeds for testing in trial plots had any serious doubts about the decisions he made. Most consumers now think otherwise. …