Post-release monitoring and long-term effects of LMOs released into the environment

Dear Colleagues,
I argue that a harmonised monitoring methodology should be focussed and agreed upon as to produce comparable information across different nations.

Once LMOs are monitored, different types of data will accumulate, which need to be centrally collected and efficiently processed. The data need to be compared to each other including baseline data and statistically analysed to assess potential adverse effects. This requires a minimum common standard for data quality, for instance on data pre-processing stage, number of replications and statistical power. And the data should if possible be based on standardised methods to be comparable. Comparabil-ity and good quality of data require a broad-scale international harmonisation ap-proach, for  instance using existing ISO standards of methods, data storage and structuring.

The inclusion und use of existing agronomic and environmental monitoring pro-grammes to monitor LMOs is worth thinking about, too. Some of them use standards. They can provide useful baseline data over many years and different sites.

Secondly,
In respect to the question of how baseline data may be developed I am sure that we all agree that determining the baseline status of a LMO field and its environment exposed is a prerequisite for identifying adverse changes.
1. This baseline status may be registered prior to LMO release and then long-term monitoring of the LMO areas may  exhibit adverse changes.
2. An alternative is the split field design and comparable long-term LMO-free refer-ence areas which has been done for instance in the UK Farm Scale Evaluations. I consider parallel observations a must in order to reduce the background noise data induced by the high dynamic in agricultural practice and landscapes.

Both long-term time series monitoring after baseline analysis and parallel monitoring of LMO areas and LMO-free areas can ideally complement one another.