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EU – POST MARKET MONITORING IN SPOTLIGHT
GM POST MARKET MONITORING SCHEME PROPOSED
9 December 2005 - CropBiotech Update
The European Union, while now open to commercial cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops, still requires legally binding post-market monitoring (PMM) activities. There is still no Union-wide consensus on such programs. With this in mind, Olivier Sanvido of the Swiss Federal Research Station for Agroecology and Agriculture proposes “A Conceptual Framework for the Design of Environmental Post-Market Monitoring of Genetically Modified Plants.” His paper appears in the latest issue of the Information Systems for Biotechnology news report.
Sanvido recounts PMM according to EU legislation, where the program is composed mainly of case-specific monitoring (CSM) and general surveillance (GS). CSM is intended to assess whether GM crops will have any adverse affects on the environment, while GS is designed to “detect unanticipated adverse environmental effects that were not identified and considered during pre-market risk assessment.”
He further recommends that differences in crop management techniques for GM and conventional plants be taken into account, and that both CSM and GS should be “designed and implemented according to a pragmatic and realistic approach in order to be feasible.”
For more information, contact Olivier Sanvido at olivier.sanvido@fal.admin.ch. Read the complete article at - www.isb.vt.edu/news/2005/news05.Dec.htm.
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