Report of the Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Risk Assessment on its second meeting

It was noted that the topic of living modified fish would be discussed with a view to considering further guidance at the eleventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Protocol. [...] Objective and scope In its decision CP-10/10, the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety agreed to develop additional voluntary guidance materials to support the case-by- case risk assessment of living modified organisms (LMOs) containing engineered gene drives (EGDs; EGD-LMOs) in accordance with annex III to the Protocol.5, 6 The Con. [...] As a response, and with the financial support of the Government of Finland and the European Union, the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity commissioned the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) to develop a detailed outline to support the development of the additional voluntary guidance materials on the risk assessment of EGD-LMOs. [...] 7 See decisions BS-IV/11 BS-V/12, on risk assessment and risk management, of the Conference of the Parties serving as a meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol, which support the drafting of and describe the objectives of the guidance on risk assessment of living modified organisms and monitoring in the context of risk assessment. [...] Conceptually, EGDs could be engineered to increase the frequency of the genetic modification of interest in a population for a limited number of generations, after which the frequency of the genetic modification of interest in the population decreases and is then lost from the target population.