Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Excellence Through Stewardship program?
The Excellence Through Stewardship program is the first industry-coordinated program to meet today's product stewardship challenges for the full life cycle of biotech plants into the future.
What are the goals of the Excellence Through Stewardship program?
The program is intended to promote and support company efforts to encourage
- Full compliance with all applicable regulatory requirements;
- Plant product integrity, so plants will have the desired and expected characteristics;
- The flow of goods in commerce; and
- The prevention of trade disruptions.
Details on the Excellence Through Stewardship program
What is product stewardship? What is quality management?
Product stewardship addresses the scope and depth of technical and business measures that cover the breadth of the product life cycle to promote ethical and responsible management of biotechnology-derived products. Stewardship makes good business sense: careful attention to the safety, safe use and integrity of products and their market impact is essential for high-value products in any industry.
In agricultural biotechnology, meticulous production methods are a business requirement so the seeds sold will yield harvests with the desired and expected characteristics. This is an essential step to producing more and better food, feed and fiber through agricultural biotechnology.
Quality management is a component of stewardship, which comprises the processes and systems to establish and maintain quality in each phase of the product life cycle.
What does the Excellence Through Stewardship program consist of?
There are three major components to the Excellence Through Stewardship program:
- Stewardship Objectives, Principles and Management Practices
- Guides to Understanding and Implementing Stewardship and Quality Management Systems
- A Global Stewardship Audit Process
The principles and management practices address practical and technical measures specific to each phase of the product life cycle, which contribute to responsible product management, including:
- Product integrity;
- Conduct of field trials;
- Product launch;
- Incident response; and
- Product discontinuation.
These principles and management practices require defined, documented activities to address objectives, planning, training, control and compliance.
The stewardship audit process involves third-party audits of technology providers to verify the implementation of appropriate stewardship programs. These audits will confirm quality management systems and compliance with the principles and management practices.
To which companies does the Excellence Through Stewardship initiative apply?
The Excellence Through Stewardship initiative is intended to assist both ETS members and non-members in developing tailored quality management programs to address the product life cycle phases in which the individual developer is engaged.
To what types of products does the Excellence Through Stewardship program apply?
The Excellence Through Stewardship process can be applied to all biotech-derived plant products that have the potential to enter the food or feed supply, including, but not limited to, commodity crops, specialty crops, energy crops, perennials, ornamentals, plant-made pharmaceuticals (PMPs) and plant-made industrial products (PMIPs).
Does this initiative just apply to the United States?
No. ETS and its members are committed to implementing the program globally. Through a phased-in approach, companies will first have the program in place in the United States and then expand it to their global operations.
How will the stewardship audit program be conducted?
Third-party audits will be conducted at a systems level, at specified intervals and at the member companies' expense.
When will the Excellence Through Stewardship initiative be implemented?
The Excellence Through Stewardship program is a global stewardship program that will be introduced in a phased approach. ETS anticipates that the program will first be rolled out in the United States, and will subsequently be extended globally.
What difference will this initiative make in the agricultural biotechnology industry?
The Excellence Through Stewardship® initiative is focused on promoting consistently high-quality practices. The program will continue the enhancement of the industry's responsible management and development of the technology, as well as increase consistency in quality management across the industry.
|
