Pakistan has put off decisions on several genetically modified crop applications — including soybean imports, corn biosafety licences and cotton-related cases — after the country’s National Biosafety Committee (NBC) concluded that the technical recommendations before it were not clear enough to act on. The deferral came during the committee’s 38th meeting at the Ministry of Climate Change and Environmental Coordination, and it signals that the government’s cautious approach to biotech food crops is continuing.
The committee had been reviewing the recommendations of the 45th meeting of its Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), which is supposed to give the NBC clear scientific conclusions on each pending case. Finding those recommendations inconclusive, the NBC sent the files back to the TAC for a second look and directed it to return with definitive recommendations. The pending agenda includes approvals for soybean meal imports for food, feed and processing, the renewal of biosafety licences for genetically modified corn, and several cotton-related applications.
The meeting also revisited the broader question of commercializing genetically modified corn and other biotech food crops in Pakistan. A representative of the Ministry of National Food Security and Research told the committee that the government had suspended commercialization activities for biotech food crops back in 2019, pending the development of a comprehensive policy framework — a gap that, according to the briefing, has since been filled by the approval and notification of the National Agricultural Biotechnology Policy 2025.
That policy establishes Pakistan’s regulatory framework for assessing and commercializing agricultural biotechnology products, and authorities have been informed to proceed under it. But the latest deferral shows that having a framework on paper and making decisions under it are two different things. For importers of soybean and corn — commodities Pakistan relies on to feed its livestock and poultry industry — each delay in the biosafety pipeline is another spell of uncertainty over when shipments can move.
The stakes are commercial as well as regulatory. Soybean meal is a critical input for animal feed, and Pakistan’s food and feed industries watch the GM approval process closely because it determines the timing and cost of imports. Cotton-related biotech applications matter too, given the crop’s central place in the country’s agriculture and textile economy. Every meeting that ends without a decision pushes the timeline for farmers, traders and processors further out.
For now, the files are back on the technical panel’s desk. The NBC has asked for clarity, and until the TAC returns with recommendations it is willing to stand behind, the decisions on GM soybean imports, GM corn licences and cotton biotechnology applications remain on hold. The next meeting’s agenda — and the quality of the technical advice it receives — will decide whether Pakistan’s biotech food policy starts moving from paper to practice.
