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Modern biotechnologies are applied to plants species (crops, flowers, trees), animals and micro‑organisms. The safety of the resulting transgenic organisms when released in the environment for their use in agriculture, forestry, the food and feed industry or for other applications represents a challenging issue. Genetically engineered products are rigorously assessed by their developers during their elaboration, and by governments when ready for release, to ensure high safety standards. This remains essential with new biotechnology developments using insects to fight against disease outbreaks: engineered mosquitoes need to be evaluated through a scientifically sound approach to risk/safety assessment that will inform biosafety regulators and support the decision concerning the release of these novel organisms in the environment.
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This Volume 8 contains the “OECD consensus document on the biology of mosquito Aedes aegypti”. It is published in the Series on Harmonisation of Regulatory Oversight in Biotechnology which relates to the environmental risk/safety assessment of transgenic organisms, also called “biosafety” assessment. This new publication provides a useful tool to national authorities and scientists involved in the evaluation of the safety of genetically-engineered mosquitoes when released in the environment.
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The OECD’s Working Group on Harmonisation of Regulatory Oversight in Biotechnology (the “WG-HROB”) comprises delegates from the 35 member countries of the OECD and the European Commission. Typically, delegates are from those government ministries and agencies which have responsibility for the environmental risk/safety assessment of products of modern biotechnology. The WG-HROB also includes a number of observer delegations and invited experts who participate in its work, such as Argentina, the Russian Federation, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (SCBD), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), and the Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD (BIAC).
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