Washington, D.C. area food and drug lawyer Mark I. Schwartz’s recently penned a column questioning whether the European Union’s continued use of the "precautionary principle," to "effectively precluded the cultivation or sale of biotech crops or foods anywhere within its borders," or the United State’s end-product regulation of biotech crops and foods has been more successful.

Schwartz wrote that while the U.S. has developed and approved dozens of new biotech crops and foods over the past decade, the EU has been reluctant to approve any such crops or foods. He also noted the commercial success of biotech crops in the U.S. where about 90 percent of the soybeans, close to 80 percent of the cotton and 60 percent of the corn planted are biotech varieties. And close to three-quarters of the processed foods in U.S. supermarkets contain ingredients from biotech plants, he wrote.

According to Schwartz, the integration of biotech foods into the U.S. economy has its scientific origin in the 1986 Coordinated Framework for Regulation of Biotechnology policy statement, which argued that the characteristics of the end-product, rather than the characteristics of the process by which the product was developed, determine the risk level and hence the level of federal regulation.

By the end of 2007, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had evaluated about 70 biotech-food products and found them all to be as safe as their conventional counterparts. And a large body of independent scientific evidence confirms there is nothing about biotech foods that causes them to be inherently more dangerous than foods made from crops that were not enhanced with biotech.

Schwartz concludes that after 10 years of data, comparing the two regulatory frameworks – the process-oriented or the end-product-oriented, on the basis of production costs, the diversity of new varieties or safety – the clear winner in economic terms is the U.S.’s end-product regulation of biotech crops and foods.

Erikson noted that while biotechnology will continue to increase biofuel production efficiencies, it will also help significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By using biotechnology, "farmers can reduce operating costs, prevent soil erosion, maintain soil fertility and harvest crop residues as raw materials for advanced biofuels through adoption of no-till agriculture. In many cases no-till practices can even result in carbon sequestration," he said.

The recent BIO report, "Achieving Sustainable Production of Agricultural Biomass for Biorefinery Feedstock," outlines how farmers can produce, harvest and deliver sufficient feedstock to the growing biorefinery industry in an economically and environmentally sustainable way through increased use of no-till agriculture.

From corn to soybeans plant technology has transformed agriculture into a science-based business, improving yields and benefiting the environment. The article’s author claims that of the many ag technologies introduced over the past 20 years, the two that have the most impact are the introduction of herbicide-resistant soybeans and corn.

Herbicide-resistance allows farmers to control weeds by spraying herbicide over growing crops without harming them. Better weed control means increased yields and improved income. And when used in conjunction with no- and minimum-tillage practices, it helps reduce environmental impact and erosion.

Europe continues to hold out against GM crops, even as demand for food climbs globally. The farming lobby group, Copa-Cogeca recently told The Economist magazine that the rising cost of feed could jeopardize Europe's livestock industry and called on the European Commission to lift restrictions on GM feed grains.

The author points out that after years of raising the alarm of the purported dangers of what opponents like to call "Frankenfood," their dire predictions have failed to come true.