Dear colleagues, my name is Darja Stanič Racman and I'm co-moderating this Forum. I believe that the views you have shared on the Forum have already provided a very valuable and interesting information, which is great! And I'm really pleasantly surprised of how easy is to use the on-line Forum for exchanging our experiences (It is the first time for me to participate in such open ended Forum.)
Focusing back to the topic of our discussion, I would like to ask you who is or is planned to perform the RA if you are to receive the notification for first transboundary movement of LMO for intentional introduction into the environment or RA for FFPs? Do you plan to use an expert body or is it a role of the Ministry or do you have some other approach? What kind of training do you envisage for that purpose?
Looking forward to your response!

Dear Colleagues:
Greetings from Iran! My name is Behzad Ghareyazie. I am currently serving as the President of Biosafety Society of Iran, therefore my comments should be regarded as my personal view and not from my Government.
In many developping countries in my region, RA is a non issue. They eider do not simply acre for the importation of LMOs, or they simply ban it! Both of these indicates a lack of capacity in RA. In our region it is opnly Iran and Egypt who has their own LMO (released or ready for release) and therefore, RA is practiced in these two countries. In Iran, RA is conducted by producer/applicant and is submitted to the authorities. We are currently in the process of the ratification of the national biosafety law. In is in the Parliament now and has been aproved at first round. According to what so far has beed approaved in this law,  risk assessment shouyld be conducted by applicant and the documents should be reviewed by Ministry of Agriculture (for crop and agricultural commodities), Ministry of Health (for food and cosmetics) and the environmental protection Organization (for review of environmental risk assessment). I predict that it will take minimum of 6 month bvefore we have the final version of the law approved by the Parliament. Currently, National Biosafety Committee is in charge of the review of the risk assessment.
Most of the countries in the region lack the capacity for RA and require comprehensive trainings.
FAO has recently prepared and published a tool for trainers in GM food safety asessment. This tool is being used as a training amterial in many developing countries. The goal is that the participants should be able to teach the same material to the others in their own country. I beleive we need a similar tool for environmental risk assessment and post release monitoring. This tool should be balanced and can use the experience of FAO and those who were in the production and/or deliberation of the material to the developing countries.

In Serbia producer/applicant is responsible for risk assessment and National Biosafety Committee (independent expert group reviews risk assessments and gives its opinion to Ministry of Agriculture – National Competent authority for all types of GMOs.

Members of National Biosafety Committee had undergone through various trainings (MATRA project, UNEP/GEF projects, USDA FAS programmes) in order to perform that task.

Serbia was already faced with applications for field trials that involve not only new modification events but also new constructs (in Arabidopsis and tobacco). At present, it is solved through very strict risk management eg. through eliminating possibility of exposure through various techniques (male sterility, markers that enable detection of volunteers, pre reproduction-harvesting etc)., But we need capacity building in estimating and monitoring the risks for our specific environments at least for two reasons;
- we need that kind of expertise in cases of releases on larger scales where current strict risk management cannot be applied.
- we need that kind of expertise in order to be able to approve field trials under conditions that will enable data gathering for risk assessment of large scale releases