Strengthening the capacity on Genetically Modified (GM) food safety assessment and communication in Kenya, Uganda and Zambia

Strengthening the capacity on Genetically Modified (GM) food safety assessment and communication in Kenya, Uganda and Zambia

FAO Technical summary report

Year of publication 2018

Place of publication Bangkok, Thailand ;

Pages 42

Publisher FAO ;

Product type Book (stand-alone)

Edition 1

Full item page

Synopsis (short abstract) Recently the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Secretariat has requested support from FAO as the main implementation partner in a programme aimed at facilitating intra-regional trade through harmonization of food safety regulations. The need has been particularly highlighted to implement a programme of trainings focusing on building an understanding of the scientific issues underlying current divergences on regulatory approaches used by COMESA Members in relation to commodities that are important to intra-regional trade. In the last decade, the development has allowed some of the COMESA countries to be engaged in a) research, 2) import or 3) production of Genetically Modified (GM) food products while the level of capacity in evaluating the relevant applications of GM foods are not uniformly conducted among different countries due to the different laws/regulations, procedures/protocols, and/or available expertise/experts. While environmental and socio-economic parameters can differ between countries, GM food safety assessment can be universally identical, following the same procedures of the relevant Codex Alimentarius Guidelines. In 2017 and 2018, Kenya, Uganda and Zambia have worked with FAO to take an approach to assess the status quo and to jointly develop capacity in terms of knowledge and resources. Each of the participating countries was found to be at a different level of proficiency for GM food safety assessment and risk communication, however several common areas for improvement have been identified across all countries visited. During the project, relevant trainings have been provided and they have successfully addressed some of these shortcomings. Further work needs have been identified by the respective participants and national roadmaps were developed for all three countries as one of the concrete outputs of this project. The project achieved a number of other outputs including significant commitment from all three countries to work together to strengthen GM food safety assessment through regional strategy, having the first GM food safety assessment result shared by Kenya to the FAO GM Foods Platform, and mutual exchange of policy documents which are in line with Codex Alimentarius. The outputs from each country were shared among all three countries and the project results have led to the development of a group/regional initiative that would take place in the future, with flexibility to welcome more countries from the region and the continent.

Language English

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