Regulation in Biotechnology

Because biotech products, and GMOs above all, can affect human health, other living organisms and the wider environment, their production, sale and use in India are governed by a two-part legal framework. One part is regulatory oversight — a chain of statutory and advisory committees that test, document, approve and monitor biotechnology products, including a requirement that GMOs be properly labelled and used strictly according to instructions once approved. The other part is intellectual-property law, which protects the biotechnological inventions, organisms and processes themselves once they exist, giving inventors an incentive to keep developing new products. The two subsections that follow cover each in turn: the regulatory bodies th …