First Brazil ETT Workshop,
20-23 June 2006
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The GMO ERA Project and the Brazil steering committee of the project held
the first workshop to develop an Expert Teaching Team (ETT)
in Brazil. The participants successfully created teaching tools for training
scientists and policy makers in GMO environmental risk analysis. Once
the process is completed, the Brazil ETT will have the capacity to teach
an advanced course on scientific methodologies for analyzing environmental
risk, which will fulfill the environmental risk assessment requirements
of Latin American countries and international law.
The workshop was held at the Instituto Israel Pinheiro,
Brasilia, and attended by 27 participants. Brazilian participants came
from many influential institutions-- Embrapa
research centers, Universities, and other research centers. From other
Latin American countries, there were participants from organisations responsible
for national biosafety, such as the Peruvian environment committee (CONAMA)
and the Mexican biodiversity commission (CONABIO). The workshop also included
participants from our partners –from the Vietnam Agricultural Genetics
Institute, and the BiosafeTrain
Project in East Africa, as well as invited experts of the GMO ERA Project.
Participants divided into separate workshop sessions
in three areas of environmental risk assessment of GM crops: Biological
Diversity and Non-Target risks, Gene
Flow and Consequences, and Resistance
Risk Assessment and Management. There was also a session on environmental
risk assessment concepts, and how the project methods fit into ERA.
Gene flow group
The gene flow group made extensive improvements to the existing teaching
outlines. Progress was made on creating teaching materials, such as Powerpoint
presentations, navigational aids, and small group exercises. The group
enhanced the small group exercises by designing them to follow a few GM
crops through all of the course sessions. The main crops selected for
potential focus were maize, cotton, potato, mahogany and jatoba.
Resistance group
The resistance group started the workshop with the material already prepared
from the Vietnam ETT workshop. The group
improved on and developed the key concepts and key definitions of each
session. To increase the impact of the teaching materials for a Latin
American audience, the group added examples from Brazil to the training
materials.
Non-target group
The non-target group reviewed all the non-target course outlines and began
preparing teaching materials, such as small group exercises, navigational
aids, Powerpoint presentations and definitions. One important aspect of
the teaching materials that participants improved is the analysis and
illustrative examples of possible impacts on micro-organisms and other
non-insect groups.
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Brazil ETT workshop
Brazil ETT workshop
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