3.4 We recommend that every laboratory conducting genetic manipulation 
experiments must have both a properly constituted and representative local 
safety committee and a Biological Safety Officer answerable to the adminis- 
trative head of the establishment or department, who must ensure that the 
Biological Safety Officer, on whose role we place particular emphasis, has the 
necessary training, experience and authority to enable him to carry out his 
duties. As we explain in Section 5 below, these are factors that we telieve 
should be taken into account by the CMAG when it advises on whether or 
not a particular experiment should be conducted at a particular laboratory. 
We discuss training further in Section 4. 
Experimental Animals 
3.5 From time to time there will be a need to introduce live bacteria, viruses 
or phages bearing introduced genetic material into laboratory animals, initially 
to study whether genetic information is indeed transferred to animals in 
particular circumstances and to study the distribution, survival and replication 
of the vector in the animal. If this is done, the animals used must be kept in 
appropriate isolation facilities offering at least the level of containment appro- 
priate to the experiment in question and desirably a higher level in view of the 
increased risk of dissemination when animals are involved. 
3.6 Once the results of such experiments are available it may be possible to 
reduce the strictness of isolation for further experiments of the same type, if 
for example it has been shown that genetic information is unlikely to be trans- 
ferred from the vectors. But it will reed to be remembered that host-parasite 
relationships are rather specific and although there may be no undesirable 
sequels when a vector is put into one species, the outcome may be different 
if a different vector of species of animal is used, or if germ-free animals are used 
instead of conventional animals. 
Plants 
3.7 When suitable vectors become available, there will undoubtedly be 
proposals to introduce foreign nucleic acid into whole plants, especially if some 
of the exciting possibilities for genetic manipulation referred to in the Ashby 
Report (paragraph 3.4) are to be explored. Suitable measures of containment 
for the plants will be needed and we include some comments in Section 34 
of Appendix II. These will vary with the nature of the vector and of the foreign 
nucleic acid etc, as in paragraphs 2. 4-2.7 above. 
3.8 In view of the availability of experience and expertise in plant pathology 
in the Agriculture Departments, and of the rather general nature of the measures 
required under the present licensing system for known plant pathogens, as 
summarised in Section 34 of the code of practice, which in any case apply only 
to imported organisms, we feel it would be illogical to attempt to make detailed 
recommendations for the containment of plants inoculated with vectors of 
recombinant nucleic acid that might involve a hazard to plant populations. 
We therefore recommend that, for the present, all experiments involving the 
introduction of recombinant nucleic acid into plants should require the prior 
approval of the GMAG and that the GMAG should, at an early stage, agree 
with the Agriculture Departments a procedure for specifying suitable con- 
tainment measures for such experiments proposed to it. However, it should 
be borne in mind that by no means all such experiments will necessarily require 
measures as strict as those needed for the pathogens at present covered by 
licences and it may be possible to reduce the strictness of isolation procedures 
as more knowledge of the properties of the new genetic entities becomes 
available. 
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