Past Activities 2014 - 2016

Dear Forum Participants,

I would like to, once again, thank you for your enthusiastic contributions to this discussion and for sharing your expertise to facilitate the development of the training material for the proposed capacity-building workshops. We also appreciate your submissions of didactic material that can be used as references for the development of the training material.

Further to our previous discussion, participants reflected positively on the updated version of the training material that was modified to include additional sections based on participants’ suggestions.

In elaborating on views regarding the target audience of the training material, as well as the capacity-building workshops, most participants supported focusing the training material and workshops towards laboratory personnel. It was noted that while other stakeholders may benefit from such training it would be most efficient to focus on one specific target audience such that a comprehensive and in depth training can be efficiently delivered. That being said, several participants also mentioned that it may be useful to have other relevant stakeholders, such as policy makers, attending the technical trainings to facilitate the communication at the policy-science interface.

Furthermore, participants also suggested that training material for complementary workshops on sampling at the border or in the field also needs to be developed. This would be of use to the detection and identification process since the way in which a sample was collected can affect the outcome of the laboratory analysis.

Other considerations that were mentioned by participants included the need to tailor the proposed workshops to include considerations that are specific to each region. This can be achieved, for instance, by inviting experts from regional laboratories who have a strong background in the detection and identification of LMOs.

Furthermore, ensuring that the content of both the training material and the workshops are comprehensive and thorough enough to engage participants with varying levels of expertise will enable as many people as possible to benefit from the training.

We hope that participants have found these discussions engaging and informative.  We feel that progress has been made in laying a foundation for further deliberations on this topic at the upcoming workshop of the Network.

Kind regards,
Dina