PARTICIPANTS

There were approximately 300 - 350 participants from 50 countries, including experts from intergovernmental organizations, scientific institutions, consumer and environmental interest groups, industry, government regulators, policy makers, and media from North and South.

OPENING THEMES

A strong theme for the conference was presented by the British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott who called on participants to pursue their discussions "on the basis of rational, factual and honest debate, noting that "global problems require global solutions and global consensus based on facts, reason and free and open discussion" Biotechnology, he added, "has the potential to bring tremendous benefits. But the public's real concerns must be addressed and there must be greater transparency of information in the labeling of GM foods."

Continuing this theme, Suwit Khunkitti, Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand, emphasized in his opening speech "the potential and the pitfalls" of new biotechnology and genetically modified foods. Acknowledging the wide range of opposing views on GM foods, he drew attention to the fears of small-holders in developing countries about the possible consequences for their livelihoods of the introduction of GM plant and animal products. He also stressed the need for full information for consumers. "The rights of consumers are supreme and must be respected, " he said. "Consumers have the absolute right to know what is in the food that they consume."

1. "New biotechnology" includes genetically modified organisms, living modified organisms, novel foods and feeds.

OECD Deputy Secretary General Herwig SchlÖgl said that, while individual governments are responsible for regulating production and sale of GM foods, they need to cooperate on an international basis to tackle the issues raised by new biotechnology. The OECD's role, he explained, is to provide governments with "a platform to analyse complex issues, using science as far as possible, and to discuss and hopefully develop common policy approaches in order to make national rule-making internationally consistent."

CONFERENCE PROGRAM

The program focussed on three major themes, complemented by breakout groups to explore six issues emerging from these themes in more detail. The programmatic themes covered in the three plenary sessions were:

Science

Safety: International Consensus Building on New Biotechnology Food and Crop Safety, including the role of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs)

Society: How Stakeholder views inform national and international decision-making

The plenary sessions were complemented by a series of breakout groups that addressed the following six issues:

Generating Knowledge: Scientific knowledge and its validation

Sharing Knowledge: Availability of information

Perspectives of Developing Countries-needs and capacity building

Stakeholder Dialogue

Risk communication

Socio-economic impacts

Two background papers were prepared for the conference. These covered:

Scientific issues in relation to the safety of genetically modified food and crops

A review of activities of intergovernmental organizations pertaining to safety of foods and crop derived by modern biotechnology.

CONCLUSION OF RAPPORTEURS

The following are some of the common areas of interest that emerged from the discussion and debate:

1. The importance of considering the issues relating to food safety and human nutrition and the environmental impacts of GM foods and crops was widely recognised.

2. Environmental impacts will be influenced by the characteristics of the environment and there is likely be a need for more case/location-specific assessments of genetically modified crops in different countries and regions, perhaps more so that for GM foods, which are less location specific.

3. Health impacts may be both direct and indirect and both positive and/or negative. The evaluation f health effects should involve toxicological, nutritional and other effects.

4. Capacity building is important, especially for emerging economies and developing countries. The needs vary amongst countries, and cover a range of biotechnology-related concerns, including biosafety, establishment of regulatory frameworks, risk assessment, technology development and evaluation, intellectual property management and policy making.

5. Stakeholder Dialogue: Strengthened capacity would enable more countries and a wider range of stakeholders to participate more effectively in national and international dialogues and for a conducted under the auspices of international agencies. Dialogues needs to be based on common understanding of transparency, openness and inclusiveness. In enhancing transparency greater access of all stakeholders to information in dossiers to support decisions on GM food and crops would be beneficial.

6. Strengthened capacity would assist countries in implementing the Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety. Although over 100 countries have signed the protocol, only five have so far agreed to implement it. Some countries are constrained in signing the protocol as they lack the capacity and the human and financial resources to implement the protocol.

7. International harmonization, standards and protocols: The international organizations should continue their important work on harmonization of regulatory approaches and the development of commonly agreed standards and protocols for measuring risk assessment and environmental impact, with wider stakeholder participation.

8. Science based risk assessments should be the basis for decision making. There needs to be means for validation of the scientific basis of the risk assessments, in ways that are acceptable to a wide range of stakeholders. Encourage the continued development of robust, science based methods for risk assessments for GM foods and crops, so that government regulators will be able to ensure their safety for human consumption and for release into the environment.

9. Science can inform the policy and decision making processes, but cannot and should not control it. Science can best contribute when decision-makers frame the questions to which science may be able to provide answers of options.

10. Independent scientific investigations could contribute to greater understanding of the risks, by developing improved methodologies, techniques and protocols for measuring the constituents and the behavior of GM food and crops. This would also lead to increased credibility of regulatory processes.

11. Public interest research: Some of these investigations need to be publicly funded, to guarantee their independence and public availability of information and public goods, such as those resulting from research on orphan crops. This recognizes that given the rapid advances in the life sciences, there is a degree of uncertainty as to the long term and possible unintended effects of GM foods and crops. This requires governments to fund research in the public good, so as to generate publicly available data to set standards for food and environmental safety. These standards developed in the public interest would then inform regulatory decisions on the approval of specific products. These need to be broadly based food safety principles that would govern development of standards for microbiological, chemical, and GM safety of food.

12. Potential benefits: There are also potential benefits from the safe applications of new biotechnology in addressing specific problems in developing countries. Countries need to have access to new scientific developments, the capacity to assess and regulate new foods and crops, and access to markets for their export produce, where these meet international norms for food safety standards. There is an urgent need to agree on what these standards are for GM food and crops.

CONCLUSION OF CHAIRMAN

1. The future government and industry should prepare dossiers not just for satisfying the regulatory process but also to meet part their duty of accountability of society

2. Each government organization and national body concerned with new biotechnology should make a commitment to attend appropriate stakeholder fora.

3. Research should be done to elaborate methods to monitor GMOs in the environment, intergovernmental organizations should be proactive in harmonizing guidelines in their field.

4. An accelerated internationally, coordinated program of capacity building activities should be initiated.

5. Government should retain and acceptable balance between public and private research funding for biosafety application.

Remark: The participants' opinions will be consolidated in the final report available at www.oecd.org/bangkok .

Saipin Maneepun, Food Science and Technology Association of Thailand (FoSTAT), 7/16/2001