The Biosafety Clearing-House (BCH;
http://bch.cbd.int) is a mechanism set up under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to facilitate the exchange of information on LMOs and assist countries that are Parties to the Protocol to better comply with their obligations.
The BCH provides open and easy access to a variety of scientific, technical, environmental, legal and capacity building information provided in all 6 languages of the UN. The BCH contains information that must be provided by Parties to the Protocol, such as decisions on release or import of LMOs, risk assessments, competent national authorities, and national laws.
Governments that are not Parties to the Protocol are also encouraged to contribute information to the BCH, and in fact a large number of the decisions regarding LMOs have been registered in the BCH by non-Party governments.
The records of decisions, risk assessments, LMOs, donor and recipient organisms, and DNA sequences are cross-referenced in a way that facilitates data retrieval. For instance, while looking at an LMO record, all the records for the risk assessment that reference that specific LMO can be easily accessed and retrieved.
The BCH also contains other relevant information and resources, including information on national contacts, capacity-building, a roster of government-nominated biosafety experts, and links to other websites, publications and databases through the Biosafety Information Resource Centre.
