Countries that have signed biosafety pact to meet next week in Malaysia - UN

Governments that have signed the United Nations Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety - a pact protecting natural biological diversity from organisms modified by modern biotechnology - will meet for the first time next week in Malaysia to discuss capacity-building, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said today.

The Protocol supplements the Convention on Biological Diversity, whose Executive Secretary, Hamdallah Zedan, said the meeting in Kuala Lumpur should serve as an occasion for participants to "renew their commitment to safeguarding biological diversity from all threats, including potential adverse effects that may result from the transboundary transfer, handling and use of LMOs [living modified organisms]."

He also called on all States that have not yet done so to ratify or accede to the Protocol as soon as possible.

The five-day meeting is slated to consider how to implement the Protocol, including handling, transport, packaging and identification of LMOs, also popularly known as genetically modified organisms (GMOs).