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Dear Colleagues,
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is
establishing an Electronic Forum on Biotechnology in Food and
Agriculture.
We wish to invite you to be a member of the Forum.
Objectives of the Forum:
To provide an open forum that will allow a wide range of parties,
including governmental and non-governmental organisations, policy makers and the general public, to discuss and exchange views and experiences about
specific issues concerning biotechnology in food and agriculture for developing countries. This will be done through a series of e-mail conferences, each lasting two months, on specific topics, for which background (before the conferences) and summary documents (after) will be produced.
Background to the Forum:
Farmers and specialist breeders have developed and used many
biotechnologies to improve plants and animals within agriculture, or to make food and agricultural products. Now, improvements in molecular science and in
reproductive biology and a radical new understanding of genetics have
resulted in the development of a range of new cutting-edge techniques.
These allow us to directly modify genetic material, better study the
extent/pattern of genetic variation, and they may greatly speed up
progress. They may also help us to tackle so far intractable problems. The Forum will focus on such techniques.
Biotechnology is a collection of tools that can be applied to many
areas of food and agriculture (including animals, crops, fish and forest
trees). This collection comprises scientific tools that are very diverse and
sometimes highly controversial. They may pose ethical problems and require
substantial debate among policy makers, researchers and the public at large.
Particularly in some areas of biotechnology, the debate has become
quite polarised and there is therefore an increasing need for quality,
unbiased, factual information. It is in this spirit that the Forum is being
established.
Practical Aspects of the Forum:
The Forum is open to all parties interested in biotechnology in food
and agriculture - NGOs, private industry, researchers, regional networks,
private individuals and, the main target group, policy makers (especially
those in developing countries). Registration is open to all, although
active participants will be required to state clearly their affiliation, if
they have any. The Forum is an official FAO activity and will be operated
as a joint activity of technical Departments of FAO and of the National
Agricultural Research Systems secretariat to the Global Forum on
Agricultural Research, and co-ordinated by the recently established
FAO Inter-Departmental Working Group on Biotechnology.
The Forum will operate a series of e-mail conferences on specific
topics that will be discussed for a limited 2-month time period only. The
topics will all have biotechnology as the core subject and may cover themes
such as biosafety, public/private agricultural research, biodiversity,
capacity-building, food safety, poverty alleviation, benefit sharing,
intellectual property rights and food production, all topics as they
relate to developing countries. As the Forum covers the broad range of
activities found within the area of food and agriculture, it will include topics both of specific relevance to those interested in the animal, crop, fish or forestry sectors or of general relevance to all sectors. To register
for any conference, individuals must first be members of the Forum and agree
to abide by the rules of the Forum.
Before a given e-mail conference begins, all members of the Forum will receive an e-mail message inviting them to join the conference and
giving them information on the timing of the conference plus a background
document written in ''layman's language'' on the topic to be discussed. For all topics, certain issues should always be addressed in the conference
and sought in the outputs, such as the practical consequences of the topic
for developing countries or the relative importance of the topic for
different regions of the developing world.
Forum members who register for a given e-mail conference will receive
all e-mail messages from the conference, although they can sign off
whenever they wish, and they may submit messages (of no more than 600 words) to the discussion. At the end of 2 months, the discussion is terminated and a
brief summary document, again in layman's language, will be written and sent
to all members of the Forum. At the same time, a more comprehensive
summary document will also be written and made available. The summary
documents will provide a synopsis of the main arguments and concerns discussed and, as such, will represent the current 'state of the debate' for that particular topic. The background and summary documents will be used as material for a future FAO publication. Whenever possible, the Forum will be linked to other ongoing FAO activities. For example, selected contributions to the Forum could be used as a basis for inviting people to present papers at the planned International Symposium on Basic Food Commodities to be held
at FAO, Rome in June 2001.
More than one conference may be in operation at any given time. Each
conference will have a moderator, who will screen all messages before
theyare posted to ensure that they follow the rules of the Forum (e.g.,
that they are not offensive) and are relevant to the topic of the
conference. The moderator will play an active role in the conference to ensure that thediscussion is of high quality. The level of involvement of individual members of the Forum will differ greatly. Some may choose not to
register for any conferences and will only receive the announcements and the
background and summary documents of each conference, while others may
register for many conferences.
A website to complement and support the Forum has been established (http://www.fao.org/biotech/forum.htm). It will contain information on
the e-mail conferences, including archives of all messages posted, plus a
glossary of biotechnology terminology.
Initial e-mail Conferences:
It is planned to begin with four conferences which will deal with the
crop, forestry, animal and fish sectors separately. The first conference
will begin within the next 2 weeks and will deal with the theme of ''how
appropriate are currently available biotechnologies in the crop sector
for food production and agriculture in developing countries''. It is
planned that the next two conferences (on the forestry and animal sectors)
will follow the same theme and begin roughly one month later and that the
fourth conference (on the fish sector) will begin a further two months after
that.
Joining the Forum:
Individuals may register for the Forum at any time. This can be done
by sending an e-mail message to mailserv@mailserv.fao.org leaving the
subject blank and entering the one-line text message as follows: -
subscribe BIOTECH-L
No other text should be added to the message (e.g., mail signature)
otherwise FAO's mailserv facility will reject the subscription request.
After registering, members will be provided with more information on
upcoming e-mail conferences and the rules of the Forum. Participation
in the Forum and its e-mail conferences is contingent upon and constitutes
acceptance of the rules of the Forum.
Contacting Us:
Please tell others about the Forum or let us know of others we should
inform about the Forum. For further information on the Forum, contact the
Forum Administrator at biotech-admin@fao.org
9th March 2000
[Source: From List: Biotech Activists (biotech_activists@iatp.org)
Date Posted: 03/14/2000 Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 10:32:07 -0600
Posted by: geno@zap.a2000.nl
]
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23 March
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