Safe and acceptable strategies for producing foreign molecules in plants

The ability to express foreign genes using transgenic technologies has opened up options for producing large quantities of commercially important industrial or pharmaceutical products in plants. These technologies have made it possible to use well-developed systems of commercial agriculture that were developed principally to produce raw material for large-scale food, feed or processing applications for the production of foreign molecules. The possibility of the novel industrial or pharmaceutical molecules produced in such plants, or components derived from them, contaminating the environment and food chains has become especially controversial. This potential contamination has prompted detailed consideration of how such crops and the molecules that they produce can be effectively isolated and contained. First, the crop can be completely isolated physically from its food or feed counterpart during every aspect of its development and commercialization. Second, genetic isolation systems or genetic barriers that prevent normal reproduction can be used to reduce the likelihood of the industrial or pharmaceutical crop entering the food chain.