摘要：There has been enormous growth in the use of biotechnology in food crop production. In1999 approximately100 million acres were planted to genetically modified (GM) crops, fourtimes more than the area in 1997 (James 1998). Despite this growing use, concerns have beenraised in both the popular press (e.g., Bonham 1999) and scientific articles (Butler et al. 1999)regarding the potential for the widespread release of GM crops to result in environmentaldamage. In part, this view is fostered by concerns that GM crops are being released withoutadequate knowledge of their long term environmental impacts (Mander and Goldsmith 1996;Butler et al. 1999) or, in some countries, without procedures to deal with environmentalproblems that may occur (Hruska and Lara Pavón 1997). Currently the decision to release a GMcrop within United States is based on an assessment of the risks of environmental, health andother potential damages (Mooney and Klein In Press). Although considerable research is beingundertaken to understand these risks, opinions differ regarding the probability of environmentaldamage.
