At a public hearing before the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today, the American Soybean Association (ASA) stressed that the complete absence of sound scientific evidence to support false and misleading claims about the safety of biotech products gives every reason to support the technology. Biotechnology is a tool for producing safer, more nutritious crops, more efficiently and more abundantly, said ASA Board member Scott Fritz, a soybean grower from Winamac, Indiana. Fritz represented ASA at the hearing in Chicago, the first in a series of three public hearings being conducted by the FDA.

"U.S. soybean producers have worked hard to establish the quality reputation soybeans enjoy with consumers in this country and around the world," Fritz said. "If there was any legitimate basis for questioning the safety of varieties derived through biotechnology for animal or human consumption or to the environment, we would be the first to raise concerns."

Fritz stressed that ASA has confidence in the current regulatory oversight of biotechnology conducted by FDA, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. ASA fully supports the current process through which FDA reviews applications for commercial introduction of biotech products. However, if replacing this voluntary process with mandatory approval would strengthen FDA’s ability to reassure consumers regarding the safety of these products, ASA would endorse such a change.

The American Soybean Association would support developing guidelines for voluntary labeling of foods as "biotech free" or that "do not contain" biotech ingredients to help meet the needs of consumers who want to buy these products. ASA does not support mandatory labeling of products made from biotech crops that have been declared substantially equivalent to conventional crops in terms of safety, composition, nutrition, and allergenicity. "Such mandatory labeling would do nothing to give consumers useful information about the safety or nutrition of the product, but rather could potentially stigmatize food biotechnology based on unfounded and misleading claims," Fritz said.

"We believe critics of this new technology have not adequately considered the very real benefits agricultural biotechnology brings to the environment," Fritz said. "While we have made great strides in reducing the toxicity and usage of pesticides in recent years, I hope that our friends in the environmental community can see that future biotech innovations will allow us to improve even more."

Furthermore, one of the greatest benefits of biotech crops is their potential to slow the clearing of rain forests and other non-agricultural lands in developing countries. By increasing yields, rather than expanding global acreage, farmers can find the solution to feeding an additional two billion people by the year 2035.