Protecting local diversity in scenarios of modern food biotechnology, globalised trade and intellectual property rights

Decreased global and local diversity and a homogenization of biota is seen as a major threat to ecological and socio economic resilience. Consequences of modern food production, such as global propagation of few high yielding elite lines, declining diversity of landraces or consequences from gene flow, interact with socioeconomic drivers such as trade and intellectual property regulations in accelerating the mostly irreversible and broadening impacts of loss of biodiversity. Especially the SPS agreement under WTO prohibits any approaches to restrict trade of foods because of other reasons than sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures. Already now the reports of the UN- Millennium Ecosystem Assessment reports alarmingly increasing homogenization of biota and distribution of exotic species by trade and trans- boundary movements. This development is considered to reduce local ecological and social resilience in food production significantly. In the light of these developments trade regulations need to be reconsidered. The use of new, ethically guided structured Matrixes or Codes for an integrated assessment of safety and societal consequences and a participatory priority setting including aspects of public goods, such as conservation, seems to be mandatory

Avaliação de risco dos organismos geneticamente modificados Risk assessment of genetically modified organisms

Desde o começo de sua comercialização, em 1996, a área global de plantações transgênicas aumentou mais de cinquenta vezes. Nas duas últimas décadas, organizações governamentais e intergovernamentais têm planejado estratégias e protocolos para o estudo da segurança de alimentos derivados de cultivos geneticamente modificados. Os testes de segurança são realizados caso a caso e conduzidos de acordo com as características específicas das culturas modificadas e as mudanças introduzidas através da modificação genética, levando em conta o conceito de equivalência substancial. No presente trabalho, estão relatadas algumas abordagens de avaliação de risco de alimentos geneticamente modificados, assim como alguns problemas relacionados à construção genética ou mesmo à expressão do gene inserido<br>Since the commercial approve in 1996, the global area of transgenic crops has raised more than 50 times. In the last two decades, governments have been planning strategies and protocols for safety assessment of food and feed genetically modified (GM). Evaluation of food safety should be taken on a case-by-case analysis depending on the specific traits of the modified crops and the changes introduced by the genetic modification, using for this the concept of substantial equivalence. This work presents approaches for the risk assessment of GM food, as well as some problems related with the genetic construction or even with the expression of the inserted gen