Risk assessment and risk management of specific receiving environments

1. My name Oum Pisey, I am the Technical Advisor for Min. Environment of Cambodia and in charge in developing a biosafety and biotechnology policy. I would like to have comments on risk assessment and risk management of specific receiving environment as follows.

2. According to our guideline on RA an RM, risk assessors should conduct RA of LMOs includng their environment to be released (field trial, planting, contained use, food, fee or processing). In this case, if they are to be released into the environment, they have to assess that receiving environment which include wind speed of all seasons to see how long pollen can travel, distance of planting to local plants and natural environment such as protected areas, soil ecology, water ecology, farmialr with genome of certain plant in receiving environment etc. Because fragile ecosystem can be easily susceptible to a alien species, i.e. LMOs to be released so risk assessors have to assess all of these and submit the result to decision-makers whether can decide to release into this environment.

2. Regarding RM in this case, risk assessors once they done with RA, they have to suggest approaches for managing that LMO in that specific receiving environment such as monitoing measures, emergency response measures, risk revealing to the public to be aware of and cope with it etc.      

3. In developing a base line data, risk assessors should come up with the status of fragile receving environment prior to release of a particular LMO. The status of fagile receiving environment should include land, water, air and wind speed, ground water, variatety of farm nearby and their yearly production, possible plants that can intereact with that LMO once it is released into this environment, conclusion, and recommendation.

That's all I can contribute.


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Pisey Oum, 
Tel: 855-12-702239
Fax: 855-23-217560
piseyoum@hotmail.com
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It is important to clarify the necessity of such introduction. The LMO technology may have to be used for rescuing perishing endangered species in the centers of origin, fragile ecosystems in danger or unique ecosystem in small islands. Without such objectives, introduction of LMOs will be meaningless and sometimes harmful.

Baseline data collection should be focused on necessity of introduction of LMOs.