"The article describes the model of self-regulation that emerged for biosafety after Asilomar and looks at the impact of World Trade Organisation rules on biosafety issues. The article identifies a group of core regulatory principles for GMOs and provides an argument for how these principles should be ranked. A key conclusion is that the regulation of GMOs should be driven by a principle of best practice risk assessment and that the precautionary principle and the principle of substantial equivalence should drop out of the regulatory picture".