Biosafety course 2006 completed

16.08.2006

The 4th International Biosafety course “Holistic Foundations for Assessment and Regulation of Genetic Engineering and Genetically Modified Organisms" was officially opened July 30 and lasted until August 11.

The 4th International Biosafety course “Holistic Foundations for Assessment and Regulation of Genetic Engineering and Genetically Modified Organisms" was officially opened by the State Secretary of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ms. Anne M. Stenhammer on July 30 and lasted until August 11.

Fifty three regulators, senior scientists and NGOs from fifty countries were chosen among 300 applicants to attend this year’s biosafety course. The course consisted of 70 hours of lectures and guided discussions and 15 hours of laboratory practicals which were carried out by a pool of international resource persons and GenØk’s employees.

A participant’s post-course evaluation shows 60% describing the course as “Extremely useful” for understanding assessment and regulation of GE/GMOs, 38% responded “Very useful” and 2% “Useful”. On the follow-up question “How was it useful?” one participant answered:“Such training is hardly available which is comprehensive on all the relevant issues on biotech (esp. GE) and technical /legal aspects of biosafety…”. Another participant replied: “As a lawyer it gave me a better vision of the matter although I have been working on biosafety from 2002….”.

On a question of how important this course is to enable competence building in GE/GMO issues for developing countries, 64% responded that it was “Extremely important”, 28% “Very important” and 8% “Important”. On the follow-up question “Why was it important?” one participant answered: “There were certain items I used to miss when evaluating GMO applications, these were identified during the course, thus my approach will be more professional and scientifically based”. Final details of the evaluations will be presented shortly.



Evaluations are now completed,read the report here