Prof. Wang Dayuan gave a presentation during his visit to IHB on May 16.

On May 16, Prof. Wang Dayuan, the first dean of the Department of Biological Engineering at China National Rice Research Institute (CNRRI), paid a visit to the Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IHB). During his visit, Prof. Wang gave a presentation entitled “Safety of genetically modified (GM) food ".

In his presentation, Prof. Wang revealed some data of GM food. In 1996, GM soybeans and GM maize successively came into the market in the United States, and had a 17 years’ commercial application. At present, 93% of the U.S. soybean acreage is GM soybeans and 85% of the U.S. maize is GM maize. Their total outputs are over 80 million tons and 288 million tons, respectively. Based on the data from USDA, EPA, FDA Codex, EFSA and ASA, and the Business flow diagrams of U.S. soybeans and maize, Prof. Wang calculated that Americans eat at least 24.27 million tons and 56 million tons GM soybeans and GM maize every year, respectively. On average, Americans eating GM soybeans and their products is 21.5 kg per person per year, while Chinese is 7.6 kg per person per year, which is 2.8 times less than Americans.

On the safety issue of GM food, Prof. Wang pointed that there are at least 1 billion Americans who have eaten GM soybeans or insect-resistant BT gene transgenic maize for 17 years, and their next generations also have eaten them for at least 13 years, but so far there hasn’t been any legal action caused by the side effects of eating such soybeans or maize. By comparing the GM Identification System in China and foreign countries, Prof. Wang pointed out that our country is “zero tolerance” on GM Food Labeling, this is the strictest among all the countries.

Prof. Wang Dayuan is the first dean of the Department of Biological Engineering at China National Rice Research Institute (CNRRI), a member of the second academic committee at Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences(CAAS), a standing director of the International Academy of Rice Genetic Engineering, the first chief scientist and principal investigator of the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Program on Rice Biotechnology in China, consultant of Natural Product Chemistry for Sanofi-Aventis and Ciba-Geigy AG, senior research scientist and project manager of the American DNA Plant Technology Corporation.