Challenges and Risks of GMOs - What Risk Analysis is Appropriate?
Options for Future Policy Making Towards Integrated Agro-Food Systems
Held on July 16-18, 2003 at The European Institute of Public Administration,Maastricht, The Netherlands
This workshop resulted in a publication of its proceedings. The workshop gathered representatives from International Organization and governments, as well as scientists, policy analysts and stakeholders with the aim of stimulating a discussion on the most recent developments in the various and often diverging approaches towards risk analysis for genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The wide diversity of participants' background, ranging form genetics to social sciences, has been conceived in order to overcome traditional compartmentalization and to analyze the issues at stake from several perspectives. This served as an attempt to come to integrative strategies for future policy making both locally and globally. Among others, the issues that were dealt with include the relevant WTO-Agreements and their relationship with other Multilateral Agreements. Different regional and national approaches for each level of risk analysis and the relevant intellectual property regimes were as well analyzed. Finally, both the achieved success and the unsolved issues have been covered by contributions dedicated to: the immanent problems for risk assessment due to scientific uncertainty, the right and requirements for consumer information and the different positions of the relevant stakeholders.