My name is Michael Farrelly. I work in Tanzania with small scale farmers - male and female - aiming to improve livelihoods and increase food security through improved agricultural production and access to markets, and to support farmers to develop effective and sustainable responses to climate change. Here's a link to one of our projects http://chololoecovillage.wordpress.com/. I also take exception to Adrian Dubock's call (Message 4) to ignore 'public opinion' and base decisions solely on 'scientific evidence', particularly if that 'public opinion' includes the views of the millions of African small farmers living below the poverty line, many of whom struggle to afford any form of store-bought external input, or the views of the many NGOs and public agencies that have to pick up the pieces after the latest top down technological fix has failed to deliver. Without considering 'public opinion' how does he propose to answer the questions this discussion is supposed to address, e.g. the likely implications of GMOs on food security, socio-economic conditions, natural resources in developing countries, and adaptation to climate change? To paraphrase Clemenceau: Agriculture is much too important a matter to be left to the scientists. To begin to address the issues: Tanzania's 'pipeline GMOs' are currently Bt / drought resistant maize, Bt cotton, and disease resistant cassava, through public-private partnerships. New intellectual property rights legislation is being set up nationally (PBR Bill / UPOV 91 accession) and regionally via COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa), EAC (East African Community), SADC (Southern African Development Community), ARIPO (African Regional Intellectual Property Organization) on a UPOV 91 model designed to retain the rights in the control of the large multi-national corporation seed companies. I'll come back on the likely implications. Michael Farrelly, Programme Officer - Climate Change and Gender Tanzania Organic Agriculture Movement 8th floor, Mariam Towers, Shauri Moyo / Lindi Street, DSM PO Box 70089 DSM. Tanzania Email: mrfarrelly (at) gmail.com Tel: +255 (0) 755 503 089 Tel: +255 (0) 654 459 364 Skype: mrfarrelly Web: www.kilimohai.org [To contribute to this conference, send your message to [log in to unmask] For further information on this FAO Biotechnology Forum, see http://www.fao.org/biotech/biotech-forum/] ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the Biotech-Room2-L list, click the following link: https://listserv.fao.org/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=Biotech-Room2-L&A=1