The environmental safety/risks of transgenic organisms are normally based on the information on the characteristics of the host organism, the introduced traits, the environment into which the organism is introduced, the interaction between these, and the intended application. The OECD?s Working Group on Harmonisation of Regulatory Oversight in Biotechnology decided at its first session, in June 1995, to focus its work on identifying parts of this information, which could be commonly used in countries for environmental safety/risk assessment to encourage information sharing and prevent duplication of effort among countries. Biosafety Consensus Documents are one of the major outputs of its work. Biosafety Consensus Documents are intended to be a ?snapshot? of current information on a specific host organism or trait, for use during regulatory assessments. They are not intended to be a comprehensive source of information on everything that is known about a specific host or trait; but they do address the key or core set of issues that member countries believe are relevant to risk/safety assessment. This information is said to be mutually acceptable among member countries. To date, 24 Biosafety Consensus Documents have been published. They include documents which address the biology of crops, trees and microorganisms as well as those which address specific traits which are used in transgenic crops.