The British government should back further trials of a new system for
evaluating the safety of proposed experiments outdoors with genetically
modified organisms. This is the main recommendation in a report published
this week by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution.
The report focuses on GENHAZ, a system for assessing the safety of proposed
releases of GMOs. The commission first proposed using the system last year.
GENHAZ is an adaptation of HAZOP, a system developed in the chemicals industry
for identifying whether procedures on site are hazardous.
The systems consist of dia grammatic representations in the form of
鈥榙ecision trees鈥�. These chart trains of events and are meant to highlight
the things that can go wrong with an experiment or procedure and what action
to take.
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