Team:FCB-UANL/Safety
Safety considerations are very important for us due to our project’s features. In general, we can outline two main areas: (1) biosafety and biosecurity measures in the laboratory and microorganism management, and (2) safety and security measures regarding fire occurrences. For the first area, we performed a risk assessment, in which we established several biosafety protocols in response to what was determined there; and, as we further investigated, an interest in the regulations concerning scalability and commercialization of biotech products appeared. For the second area, we developed an investigation of the institutional fire safety measures to ensure the well-being of the students in our institution.
RISK ASSESSMENT
The main objective of the risk assessment is to determine all of the things that could go wrong and avoid them. The risk assessment includes a brief description of the GMOs to be used and their purpose within the project, along with the short and long-term objectives. It includes a list of potential dangers arising from the handling of GMOs in the laboratory and the possible negative effects that could arise during the development of the project. Environmental concerns about genetically modified organisms are also described in the document, together with the laboratory procedures and survival chances of the organisms outside of the laboratory’s facilities.
UPSCALING
We are completely aware that an iGEM or a biotechnology project in general should not stay within the walls of a laboratory, but it rather should be driven into the real world for society to exploit the advantages of it. Hence, we have analyzed the safety concerns regarding industrial production. Safety measures are reported in the risk assessment above, product’s quality and regulations are further described in the entrepreneurship section, just as industrial concerns are in the proposed implementation.
LEGISLATIONS
While we were determining the conditions needed for the scalability of the project and the safe introduction into the market of our product, we started to analyze the current legislations and institutions involved in biosafety and biosecurity around biotechnology products and GMOs in our country, Mexico. Some of them are shown in the following diagram:
Following one of our stakeholders’ advice of searching for regulations from other countries, we established contact with other teams to get to know their country’s situation, so that, we established a collaboration with the Ohio State iGEM team in which we set side by side the regulations in our countries. This would allow us to compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of each one of the legal systems and to come up with an initial suggestion for improving the regulatory governance of biotechnological products in both countries. During the collaboration, both of the teams had to elaborate the same type of Dual Assessment to get a broader sense of the legislation and commercialization requirements in the United States and Mexico.
Some of the topics taken into account during the Dual Assessment are:
- The law hierarchy in the countries seen through the Kelsen pyramid,
- Regulations made in the country for the biotechnology market,
- International protocols that apply in the country,
- Trade agreements to which the country belongs, legislative process for biotech products,
- Costs of introducing a biotech product in the market,
- Biosecurity commissions in the country,
- Country’s potential of becoming a biotechnological power,
- Organizations in charge of conducting risk assessments in the country,
- Type of biotech products allowed in the market,
- The country’s approach to accelerate the process of launching a biotech product in the market,
- Biotech products examples that could have a positive impact in the country if they were implemented, and
- Examples of scientists involved in politics and expedition of policies.
Here, we present one of the most important parts of our investigation, the Kelsen pyramid, with the law hierarchy of Mexico. This is important because we need to understand which are the laws that we need to go through in order to be able to sell a biotech product:
More detailed information about what was compiled and concluded during this collaboration can be found in the following document, which we strongly advise you to read.
Another task in which we worked together was to develop an argument based on a possible real life application to promote the use of GMOs. To achieve this, we followed Ohio’s State University procedure reported in their Wiki to estimate a potential beneficial intake in vitamin A if maize, genetically modified to enhance the production of ß-carotene, was used in Mexico. We considered data about the annual production of maize in Mexico and about its population, and then we performed the appropriate calculations. According to the results obtained, a clear improvement (and even surplus) in vitamin A intake could be observed if the maize used was replaced with a genetically modified maize. A detailed breakdown of the calculations done by our team is shown in the following document:
As part of our efforts for understanding legislation in other countries, we participated in iGEM’s first edition of the Policy Hackaton, competition in which we had three days to do a deep investigation about the legal challenges of a local problem of our community. For this competition, we chose the problem of “The Use of Modern Biotechnological Tools for the Protection of Native Corn”. We selected this topic due to two reasons: it is an important issue in our country and it aligns with the work done during the collaboration with the Ohio’s team mentioned above.
Nowadays in Mexico, there is still a misconception and misinformation about the effect that the use of genetically modified crops could have in Mexican agriculture. People argue that it will put in danger the corn’s sovereignty and creole corn’s safety. However, we observed the potential benefits of introducing a genetically modified crop of maize to counter a diet deficient in vitamin A. Besides, in the white paper, which was produced during the Hackathon, we discuss why this will not happen, and how, instead, the use of GMOs and biotechnology in agriculture could help promote and protect the cultivation of native corn.
It is worth mentioning that, due to the white paper and video produced during the Policy Hackathon, we were given the first place in the competition. The white paper can be found below if you want to know more about our investigation and proposal.
FIRE SAFETY
As the final product of our project is thought to be used for fires, we are concerned about fire safety both in forests and our close environment. Therefore, we conducted a thorough comparison of our school’s fire safety protocol with the one from Harvard, being the latter recognized by the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) and the OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) for its great fire management procedure, and we further analyzed the deficiencies we have in that matter. As a result of this deep analysis, we formulated several considerations for improving this system, along with an evacuation protocol and a brigade design in collaboration with Gloria Vallejo, a member of the National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR, for its acronym in Spanish).
After analyzing protocols, we made up a plan of improvements that can be slowly implemented in our university. With this in mind, a plan on how we should apply those proceedings in our school was designed:
