Institute of Technology Assessment, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Postgasse 7/4, A-1010, Vienna, Austria.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 1998;5(2):89-93. doi: 10.1007/BF02986393.
The risk assessment of genetically-modified plants pursuant to Annex II B of EU Directive 94/15/EC assumes that it is possible to infer the environmental impacts of a crop plant from its characteristics, so most of Annex II should also be applicable to conventional plants. To test this, we surveyed reports on the ecological impacts of the cultivation of non-transgenic crop plants with novel or improved traits and, in three cases, investigated whether Annex II B would have been adequate to indicate the effects. Such an assessment appears to be feasible only if the time frame on which it is based is short, so that long-term effects cannot be assessed. Secondly, the plant must be genetically homogenous which is not always granted, e.g. with forest-trees. Thirdly, the cultivation area must be defined. Differences in the behaviour of foreign plants between their original and cultivation habitats may be ecologically relevant and should be assessed. In the (few) cases where direct inference of the observed effects was possible from inherent traits, these effects often correlated with poor adaptation to local environmental conditions. The ecological impacts of traits that had been introduced in order to overcome poor adaptation may differ widely according to the way in which the traits are exploited. In practice, the effects of agricultural measures are more important than the effects of gene transfer and invasiveness, although the latter currently play a major role in risk assessment. In the light of these deliberations, a modification of Annex II B of EU Directive 94/15/EC is suggested.
根据欧盟指令 94/15/EC 附件 II B 对转基因植物进行风险评估假设，可以从作物植物的特征推断其对环境的影响，因此附件 II 的大部分内容也应适用于常规植物。为了检验这一点，我们调查了关于具有新颖或改良特性的非转基因作物种植的生态影响的报告，并在三种情况下调查了附件 II B 是否足以表明这些影响。这种评估似乎只有在其依据的时间框架较短的情况下才可行，因此无法评估长期影响。其次，植物必须具有遗传同质性，这并不总是得到保证，例如对于森林树木。第三，必须定义种植区。外来植物在其原始和种植栖息地之间的行为差异可能在生态上具有相关性，应该进行评估。在（少数）情况下，可以从固有特征直接推断出观察到的影响，这些影响通常与对当地环境条件的适应性差有关。为了克服适应性差而引入的特性的生态影响可能根据特性的利用方式而有很大差异。在实践中，农业措施的影响比基因转移和入侵性的影响更为重要，尽管后者目前在风险评估中起着主要作用。有鉴于此，建议对欧盟指令 94/15/EC 的附件 II B 进行修改。
