He was speaking at a CII workshop on "Regulation of Biotech Crops: Going Beyond Single-Gene Products". Dr Bhan added that India's biotech regulation needed to be able to respond to broader issues, in addition to specific cases that came up for approval. He said that clearly articulated information from a neutral source would help the members of different committees that approve biotechnology products to take better decisions. This was needed since it was often difficult to separate information from advocacy.

Earlier, speaking at the workshop, Dr Phillip J Eppard the regulatory affairs head for corn for Monsanto, USA explained how already biotech products were moving to a stage of having more than one trait for a single product, by successfully combining two different traits. He explained the approaches to the regulating such multi-gene products that different countries like Mexico, China, USA, Japan, and the EU followed.

DD Verma, joint secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Dr SR Gupta, deputy director general, PFA from the Ministry of Health and Dr CD Mayee, chairman of the agriculture scientists recruitment board, also spoke on the occasion.