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Describes the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment's (OTA) approach to evaluating proposals for releasing genetically engineered microorganisms (GEM) into the environment. Description of the international movement toward formulating good developmental practices stressing basic concepts and well-recognized scientific principles to evaluate proposals for releasing GEM; Complaints of critics such as Democratic Rep. James Scheuer of New York that the review of deliberate release experiments is too cumbersome and uneven a process; Review of field test proposals for genetically modified plants by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. INSET: Rabies vaccine: a strange test case in Argentina..

Discusses how the rapid development of industrial genetic engineering and the barriers it faces are boosting the study of microbial ecology. Example of the use of yeast in food products in a discussion of how people have introduced microbes into new environments; Inoculation of fields by farmers with laboratory-bred strains of nitrogen-fixing rhizobium, which might act as a role model for evaluating organisms genetically engineered for agriculture; Way that scientists can follow the growth and spread of bacterial populations and collect data on species' competitiveness among similar bacteria; Concern that genetically engineered microbes may be harmful to animals.