9th MEACB 2019
From 6 to 7 November 2019 the 9th Meeting of the European Advisory Committees on Biosafety (MEACB) in the field of contained use and deliberate release of GMOs took place in Berlin, Germany. It was hosted by the German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) and the Central Committee on Biological Safety (ZKBS ).
We were very delighted to welcome more than 65 registered participants from 15 European countries.
Since the last MEACB held in 2017 in Liège, Belgium, some new and challenging issues emerged. The agenda was diverse with exciting sessions e.g. on ‘gene drive systems’ or ‘the consequences and implications of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling of 2018 concerning new mutagenesis techniques in plant breeding’.
As a result of the panel discussion dealing with the ‘ECJ ruling in the context of the legal assessment of genome-edited plants in other parts of the world’ the majority of the present advisory committees agreed that there is a need for change of the European GMO-regulation. A joint statement of ZKBS, the Swiss EFBS and the Netherlands COGEM regarding a reasonable future regulation of the new molecular techniques was prepared and sent to the European Commission.
The presentations of the 9th MEACB are published here.
We thank all participants and especially all speakers for their valuable contribution to the meeting and the productive discussions!
You are welcome to contact us at kontakt-zkbs@bvl.bund.de for any further questions.
Fruitful discussions at the MEACB in Berlin.
Background:
When genetic engineering took its first steps in the 1970s the ZKBS was called into life. Its mission was to identify possible risks of genetic engineering and to suggest suitable measures to protect against these risks. In 1990 a legal framework for genetic engineering came into force and the ZKBS was formally established in the German Genetic Engineering Act as the central German expert committee responsible for the assessment of questions regarding biosafety. In cooperation with the German Federal States, productive research in the field of genetic engineering is thus ensured while keeping the environment and general public safe.
Progress since the first days of genetic engineering has been enormous: new techniques and their (possible) applications offer huge potential to solve fundamental emerging problems of humankind. These include for example the treatment of cancer, the reduction of population sizes of disease-transmitting mosquitoes or the food security of the world population, especially in the context of climate change.
Along with these developments, questions regarding a contemporary GMO regulation are globally discussed.
The MEACB was initiated by the Netherlands Commission on Genetic Modification (COGEM) together with its Swiss sister organization, the Swiss Expert Committee for Biosafety, in 2006 in Amsterdam in order to strengthen international contacts. Since then the MEACB has been organized every couple of years by different national genetic engineering agencies.
It is a valuable meeting that enables international scientific exchange of experiences between expert committees, authorities of the European Member States and science to strengthen risk assessment and ensure biosafety.