From their first commercialisation in the mid-1990s, genetically engineered crops (also known as transgenic crops) have been increasingly approved for cultivation and for entering in the composition of foods or feeds by a number of countries. To date, genetically engineered varieties of at least 33 different plant species (including agricultural crops, ornamental plants and flowers, as well as trees) have received regulatory approvals in OECD countries and other economies from all regions of the world. However, the vast majority of plantings remains for soybean, maize, cotton and rapeseed (canola), the four species having covered together more than 99% of the global area of transgenic crops in 2018. Over the 23‑year period from 1996 to 2018, the surface cultivated with genetically engineered crops has drastically raised worldwide, resulting in a significant increase of their harvest in human food and animal feed (often designated as “novel” foods and feeds). Analyses and statistics from several sources, despite some differences in total estimates, concur in highlighting the same following trends:

This document constitutes the third volume of the OECD Series on Novel Food and Feed Safety. It is a compendium collating in a single publication the individual “consensus documents” on the composition of crops published by the OECD Working Group for the Safety of Novel Foods and Feeds from 2015 to 2019. The plant species covered by this Volume 3, presented in the order of their initial publication, are common bean, rice, cowpea and apple. The four crops are of highly significant importance in global agricultural production and the human diet.

The OECD Task Force for the Safety of Novel Foods and Feeds was established in 1999, with the primary goal to promote international regulatory harmonisation in the risk and safety assessment of biotechnology products among member countries, by addressing aspects of the assessment of human food and animal feed derived from genetically engineered crops. This body was renamed the Working Group for the Safety of Novel Foods and Feeds (WG-SNFF) from 1 January 2017.

The individual documents composing the Safety of Novel Foods and Feeds Series, latest version, are available online at the OECD BIOTRACK website: www.oecd.org/biotrack.