Brazilian capacity building experiences in biosafety: impacts in governance and supporting decision-making.

GMOs are widely spread around the world, and Brazil is now the second producer behind the USA (1). Initially a defined policy in biosafety was put in place by 1995 which was revised in 2005 (2) with the participation of politicians, decision makers, scientific organization representatives, and groups from organized civil society. The main decision body in place since then is CTNBio, comprised of 27 PhD members and their respective alternates who hold a two-year term, renewable for up to two consecutive periods. So, a significant technical capacity had to be gathered and a critical mass had to be prepared. As expertise is gained with practice and experience, it was recognized that capacity-building initiatives were urgent for different levels of audiences. This presentation will show some experiences on how individuals, groups, institutions, and governmental authorities acted to provide training and technical assistance for the decision bodies. There were, and still are, many types of capacity-building activities in place. Different approaches incorporated a variety of forms and disciplines, and many factors were taken into account (e.g., target beneficiaries, effective content for the level of decision-maker?s audience, specific needs, and integration and collaboration among the various disciplines and capacity builders). Among such actions, active participation of country experts in international fora was also encouraged. The need for skilled risk assessors demands a continued effort from governmental and non-governmental organizations; so capacity-building has to be a continuous action. Inclusive discussions, robust scientific criteria and methods are some of the key factors that are needed to support evidence-based risk assessment, and they should be part of the content addressed by any reliable capacity building initiatives

To become more sustainable organic agriculture needs genome editing technology.

Abstract: CRISPR technology offers the opportunity for partnership between biotechnology and organic agriculture to the mitigation of food insecurity, which may be one of the few ways to truly sustainable agriculture

Concept of familiarity in risk assessment - experience of the Americas.

The International Life Science Institute (ILSI) is structured, in all countries where it operates, in Scientific Committees, among which Biotechnology. The ILSI Biotechnology Committees of Argentina and Brazil have been working together for a few years to identify issues of greatest interest for development and training in the various countries of the Americas. Due to their intrinsic importance for the problem formulation (the starting point of the risk analysis), the topics ?familiarity? and ?history of safe use? (HOSU) have stood out as shared topics of interest for this collaboration in the last 5 years. Particularly, the familiarity topic has been deeply discussed by the Committees to explore related concepts as stacked events, data transportability and similar constructs. Both topics have therefore been further elaborated, culminating in a harmonization workshop held in September / 2018 in São Paulo. The main topics addressed at the workshop were: (*) concepts of ?familiarity? and HOSU in a risk analysis of GMOs; (*) applicability of these concepts; (*) some experiences of regulatory agencies in the Americas in the use of these concepts. Among the main conclusions and recommendations are: (1) The need to formalize definitions of HOSU and ?familiarity?; for its relevance and its impacts on the Problem Formulation process and further harmonization; (2) The approaches and practice of agencies in the Americas are important for understanding the relevance and impacts of the terms and tools discussed; (3) Collaboration among regulatory agencies is essential to harmonize processes and verify the applicability of the terms and tools discussed; (4) The publication of the terms and definitions is essential, and therefore need to be presented in peer-reviewed scientific journals.A Memory of the event will be made available at the ISBR2019, where a Parallel Session on ?Familiarity? will also take place

Bio-economic modelling of soil erosion externalities and policy options: a Tunisian case study

Soil erosion, Agricultural system, Environmental externalities, Non-convexities, Policy analysis, Bio-economic model, O1, Q2, Q5,