Activities of the Open-Ended Online Forum (2014-2016)

POSTED ON BEHALF OF FRANCISCA ACEVEDO (MODERATOR)

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Dear participants of the Online Forum on Risk Assessment and Risk Management:

I have been once again honored to serve as a moderator of an online discussion, which I truly thank! It is a demanding and stressful task, but a very gratifying one as well!

As Manoela has already pointed out, this is a two week task starting on the 1st of February and finishing on the 15th February and its main objective is gathering views, relevant guidance and sources of information on four topics that the AHTEG in its first face to face meeting after COPMOP 7 that took place in Brasilia in November 2015 considered that could be incorporated directly into the Roadmap (Part 1 of the Guidance on Risk Assessment and Risk Management).

That is, these are four topics for which we believe as AHTEG members that it might not be necessary to develop a separate guidance, but that adding some key ideas, concepts, examples, references and further sources of information to the Roadmap would best illustrate when, what , how and where these topics should be handled in the context of risk assessment and risk management.

The topics that we are inviting you to think and elaborate on are:

•         “LMOs introduced in centres of origin and genetic diversity” and “LMOs intended for introduction into unmanaged ecosystems” (the two topics will be addressed together);

•         “LMOs created through use of dsRNA techniques, engineered to produce dsRNA or dsRNA” and “LMOs containing RNAi” (the two topics will be addressed together);

•         “Integrating human health into the environmental risk assessment” taking into account the topics “Nutritionally altered living modified plants” and “LMOs that produce pharmaceutical products”, as appropriate;

•         “Synergistic impacts of different herbicides that are part of the technology package that accompanies certain LMOs”.


I would like to invite you to structure our task by:

1.  Submitting your views on each topic separately, that is, I will ask the Secretariat to prepare a different thread of discussion for each of the four bullets above so that I can keep track of you interventions by topic;

2. Avoiding a debate on whether or not the topic should be a separate guidance, or if it is relevant as a topic to be further considered, but reacting rather to the following questions:

(a) Where would each topic best be inserted in the Roadmap (Part I)?, Would it need to be mentioned somewhere else as well? Where?

(b) According to your own knowledge on the matter, what would the most relevant elements be that should be considered related to each topic (try adding them in a logical stepwise manner and not repeating what is already mentioned in the Roadmap)?

(c) How would these elements be taken into consideration in the context of the framework of the Roadmap  (part I)?

(d) Are there examples that could be illustrative of the elements provided?

(e) Is there relevant guidance and/or relevant sources of information related to this topic? Please provide them;

(f) What are the existing gaps of knowledge? How would you suggest them to be tackled?

As the Secretariat has already pointed out, **the purpose of this discussion is to “brainstorm” by gathering information and various points of views on the above mentioned topics.** This exercise will directly help construct future work that will be done related to these topics in the Roadmap.

I invite you to be quick and start uploading your thoughts and experience as early as possible during the two week period to enable an interesting discussion to take place in each of the four topics identified for this round of discussions.

Kind regards,…….y un fuerte abrazo!

Fran