44 
1 organisms can be waived if all of the requirements for 
2 waiver are met, we would like to reemphasize it is 
3 obligatory that the U.S. Department of Agriculture be 
4 deeply involved in this process. Our main concern with 
5 this item resides in the mechanism of waiver, the 
6 definitive requirements for a waiver, and the latitude 
7 that the waiver requires for release. We would 
8 encourage the NIH to draw upon their resources, such 
9 as the US DA , OSHA, and the Environmental Protection 
10 Agency in order to furnish researchers more definitive 
11 guidelines for the waiver. 
12 There have been some suggestions made that the 
13 institutional biosafety committees are self-serving, ineffec 
14 tive, and in reality are only researchers regulating them- 
15 selves. As chairman of the Beltsville Agricultural 
16 Research Center Biosafety Committee, I take exception to 
17 this suggestion. The membership of our committee was 
18 purposely made diverse, and includes, one, individuals 
19 from a number of scientific disciplines -- those that have 
20 interest in recombinant DNA and those that do not; two, 
21 individuals who are knowledgeable about laboratory 
22 safety and engineering principles; and three, laboratory 
23 technical staff. 
24 Our first recombinant DNA project submitted 
25 for certification to the committee was in fact returned 
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