Theme 4: Conclusions and recommendations

Dear Forum participants,

As this Online Forum on Standards for LMO Shipments draws to a close, we wanted to thank you for your participation and contributions to the discussions. The Forum has produced an informative exchange. We hope that the information shared and the suggestions made will facilitate the consideration of the need for and modalities of developing standards in the context of paragraph 3 of Article 18 of the Biosafety Protocol at the next meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Biosafety Protocol (COP-MOP) in Nagoya, Japan in October 2010.

A special thank you to the experts who made themselves available for the ‘ask an expert’ section of the Forum. Their experience provided important insights into the work of other organizations whose mandates relate to the handling, transport, packaging and identification of living modified organisms.

The next step in this process is for the Secretariat to prepare a summary of the outcome of the conference, reflecting the full range of views expressed, for the consideration of COP-MOP 5 in accordance with paragraph 4 of decision BS-IV/10. We will endeavour to have this document available in the next couple of months. It will be made available in the documents section of the Forum as well as other parts of the main Protocol web page (http://www.cbd.int/biosafety).

The content of this Online Forum will remain available through the Biosafety Clearing-House.

Thanks again,
The Biosafety Team