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510 VOLUME 25 NUMBER 5 MAY 2007 NATURE BIOTECHNOLOGY guiding a single maize event through the regulatory process are reported in the form of ranges in Table 1 and Table 2. The costs of withdrawn events are not included in the figures. To preserve the confidentiality of firm-level data used, we do not report the means of the total compliance costs or of the individual cost categories. When possible, compliance costs unique to a country because of its specific regulatory requirements are separately reported (eg, EU requirements for development of detection methods). It should be noted that the compliance costs reported here are representative. The cooperating biotech developers, for instance, own or co-own all 24 maize events that have been approved in the United States. Given the data we use, however, the compliance costs we report are representative of recent approvals (eg, MON 863, NK 603 or …