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Agricultural Biotechnologies
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The News items relate to applications of biotechnologies in food and agriculture in developing countries and their major focus is on the activities of FAO, other UN agencies/bodies and the 15 CGIAR research centres. The News items cover all food and agricultural sectors (crops, forestry, fisheries/aquaculture, livestock, agro-industry) and a wide range of biotechnologies (e.g. use of molecular markers, artificial insemination, triploidisation, biofertilisers, micropropagation, genomics, genetic modification etc.). New documents are included as News if they are freely available on the web and, for people who can't download them or who wish further information, an e-mail contact is also provided. The News service was launched in January 2002 and all News items posted since then (there were 800 in the first 9 years) are available here. The news and event items on this website are also disseminated through an e-mail newsletter called FAO-BiotechNews that is published in six different versions, one per language i.e. Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. To subscribe, send a message to [email protected] indicating which e-mail addresses are to be subscribed and in which language they wish to receive the newsletter.
04/10/2003
Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA), an initiative to provide free or low-cost access to major scientific journals in agriculture and related biological, environmental and social sciences to public institutions in developing countries, was launched on 14 October 2003 by FAO and a range of public and private sector partners. It provides access to over 400 journals, many dealing directly or indirectly with biotechnology, from the world`s leading academic publishers. Participating institutions need computers connected to the Internet with a connection of 56k baud rate or higher. See http://www.aginternetwork.org/en/index.php (in Arabic, English, French or Spanish) or contact [email protected] for further details.
03/10/2003
The XII World Forestry Congress, jointly organised by the Department of Natural Resources Canada, the Ministère des Ressources Naturelles du Québec, and FAO, was held on 21-28 September 2003 in Québec City, Canada. The congress, hosted every six years by an FAO Member country, provides a global forum to discuss forest management, conservation and development. It attracted more than 4,000 participants from over 140 countries and a wide spectrum of issues, in the context of the Congress theme "Forests, Source of Life", was considered. All papers from the congress, some dealing with applications of biotechnologies to forestry, are now available. See http://www.fao.org/forestry/docrep/wfcxii (in English, French and Spanish) or contact [email protected] for more information.
02/10/2003
The third module ("consultation and analysis") of a toolkit aiming to provide a practical guide to assist countries in developing their draft National Biosafety Framework (NBF), under the UNEP-GEF Project on Development of NBFs, has just been published. The module addresses the involvement of stakeholders and the consultation, analysis, and training activities needed to identify the priorities and parameters for the drafting of the NBF. See http://www.unep.ch/biosafety/devdocuments.htm#Toolkit (in English, Spanish and Russian) or contact [email protected] for more information.
01/10/2003
A series of sub-regional workshops on "Development of regulatory regime & administrative systems for national biosafety frameworks" is taking place from October 2003 to May 2004 under the UNEP-GEF Project on Development of National Biosafety Frameworks. The location and dates are Shiraz, Iran (19-22 October); Santiago, Chile (25-28 November); Antalya, Turkey (9-12 December); Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania (9-12 March - tentative date/location); Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (20-23 April) and Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago (11-14 May). Relevant documents and reports from the workshops are to be provided at on the web or contact [email protected] for more information.
09/09/2003
As part of the ESA Working Papers series, FAO has recently published "The economics of agricultural biotechnology research" (Paper 03-07) and "Biotechnology R&D: Policy options to ensure access and benefits for the poor" (Paper 03-08), both by C.E. Pray and A. Naseem. ESA Working Papers are produced by FAO`s Agricultural and Development Economics Division (ESA) and are circulated to stimulate discussion and comments. See http://www.fao.org/es/ESA/pub_esa_2003_en.htm or contact [email protected] to request a copy of the papers.
08/09/2003
Issue number 30 of the annual bulletin Forest Genetic Resources, produced by FAO`s Forest Resources Development Service, is now available on the web. In addition to a number of other biotechnology-related articles, it includes "The role and implications of biotechnology in forestry" by A. Yanchuk, an updated summary of a paper published in Unasylva (2001), 204, 52-61 by the same author when he was a visiting expert at FAO. See the bulletin or contact [email protected] for more information.
07/09/2003
The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity entered into force on 11 September 2003. The objective of the Protocol is "to contribute to ensuring an adequate level of protection in the field of the safe transfer, handling and use of living modified organisms resulting from modern biotechnology that may have adverse effects on the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, taking also into account risks to human health, and specifically focusing on transboundary movements". As of 25 September, there were 61 Parties to the Protocol. The 1st meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Protocol takes place on 23-27 February 2004 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. See a press kit, with information in English, French and Spanish, at http://www.biodiv.org/doc/press/pk-bs-01.asp or contact [email protected] for more information.
06/09/2003
The Secretary-General submitted to the 58th session of the United Nations General Assembly, which opened on 16 September 2003, the "Report of the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity". The General Assembly is the main deliberative organ of the United Nations. The report provides information on ongoing work regarding the Convention, including the status of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity. See Document A/58/191 in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish from http://www.un.org/documents/ or contact http://www.un.org/depts/dhl/sendmail/libcontact.asp for more information.
05/09/2003
A report entitled "Impact of new biotechnologies, with particular attention to sustainable development, including food security, health and economic productivity" has been submitted by the Secretary-General to the 58th session of the United Nations General Assembly. The 17-page report, prepared by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development secretariat, "identifies sectors and countries where biotechnology is making a significant contribution to economic productivity and human welfare as well as the needs for capacity-building, technology transfer and political will". See Document A/58/76 in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish from http://www.un.org/documents/ or contact [email protected] for more information.
04/09/2003
At their 1st meeting in 2002, the Parties to the Aarhus Convention (i.e. the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters) established a Working Group on GMOs. The main task of the Working Group is to explore options for a legally binding approach to further developing the application of the Convention to GMOs, including through possible instruments, to select the most appropriate options and to develop these for consideration and possible decision or adoption by the Parties at their 2nd meeting. The 2nd meeting of the Working Group on GMOs takes place on 1-3 October 2003 in Geneva, Switzerland. The meeting agenda and relevant documents (in English, French and Russian) are available at http://www.unece.org/env/pp/gmo.htm or contact [email protected] for more information.
03/09/2003
The Institute for Health and Consumer Protection of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission and the World Health Organization (WHO) Food Safety Programme in Europe have collaborated since 2000 in the organisation of training courses on techniques for detecting GMOs in foods, intended to teach molecular detection techniques to laboratory personnel with a good level of analytical knowledge, but with no or little expertise in this specific domain. The manual, entitled "The analysis of food samples for the presence of genetically modified organisms", edited by M. Querci, M. Jermini and G. Van Den Eede, used during these courses has now been made available on the web. See http://gmotraining.jrc.it/ or contact JRC for more information.
02/09/2003
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has recently published "Considerations for the safety assessment of animal feedstuffs derived from genetically modified plants". This 46-page document "addresses considerations in the safety assessment of GM foodstuffs, including the fate of DNA and protein in animal feeding, animal feeding studies, and future GM feedstuffs. As well, there is background material on the various organisms and traits constituting GM plants used as animal feeds". It is number 9 in the Series on the Safety of Novel Foods and Feeds. See the document or contact [email protected] to request the publication.
01/09/2003
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), one of the 16 research centres supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), has just published 2020 Focus 10, entitled "Food safety in food security and food trade", edited by L.J. Unnevehr. It contains 17 policy briefs describing "how developing countries are addressing food safety issues in order to improve both food security and food trade, and discusses the risks, benefits, and costs when such policies are implemented". Number 16 is a 2-page brief on "Food safety and GM crops: Implications for developing-country research" by J.I. Cohen, H. Quemada, and R. Frederick. See http://www.ifpri.org/2020/focus/focus10.htm or contact [email protected] to request a copy.
20/07/2003
At the 26th session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, held from 30 June to 7 July 2003 at FAO Headquarters, Rome, a landmark agreement was adopted on how to assess the risks to consumers from foods derived from biotechnology, including genetically modified foods. These guidelines lay out broad general principles intended to make the analysis and management of risks related to foods derived from biotechnology uniform across Codex`s 169 member countries. The Commission adopted the Draft Principles for the Risk Analysis of Foods Derived from Modern Biotechnology, Draft Guideline for the Conduct of Food Safety Assessment of Recombinant-DNA Microorganisms, Draft Guideline for the Conduct of Food Safety Assessment of Foods Derived from Recombinant-DNA Plants and the Proposed Draft Annex on Possible Allergenicity Assessment. The report of the meeting will be made available at http://www.codexalimentarius.net/reports.asp. For further information, contact [email protected].
19/07/2003
A report entitled "Status of agricultural biotechnology and biosafety in selected countries of the Balkans, the Caucasus and Moldova" has just been published (July 2003). It was commissioned by FAO`s Research and Technology Development Service and the FAO Regional Office for Europe and addresses issues of agricultural biotechnology and biosafety in five Balkan states (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (now Serbia and Montenegro)), the Caucasian states (i.e. Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) and Moldova. For each of the nine states, information is presented under seven main heading: Profile of national agriculture; national agricultural policy; status of biotechnology research; ongoing biotechnology projects; applications of biotechnology; regulatory frameworks for biosafety of genetically modified organisms and intellectual property rights and, finally, areas requiring support. See ftp://ftp.fao.org/sd/SDR/SDRR/REUBIOSAFETY4-2.doc (Word format - 548 KB) or contact [email protected] to request a copy or provide comments on the report.
17/07/2003
In July 2003, FAO`s Forest Resources Development Service released "Forest reproductive material: An overview", written by A.M. Robbins, as part of its Forest Genetic Resources Working Papers series. Forest reproductive material (FRM) or germplasm is a general term for seeds, cuttings, pollen, tissue cultures - any biological matter from which new trees are regenerated. The introduction says the on-line publication could be thought of as "a workshop in which we have provided a tool-rack, showing you the information tools you can use - the jobs they do, the techniques used and where you can find them". It covers themes such as propagation (including micropropagation) of FRM and some key issues (ownership, introduced species, and genetic modification) concerning FRM. The guide will be periodically updated and made available in printed format at a later date. See http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/AD093E/AD093E00.HTM or contact [email protected] for more information.
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