Background
In July 1999, the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the international food standards body, agreed to establish an international Ad Hoc Intergovernmental Task Force on foods derived from biotechnology (hereafter referred to as the Task Force). The Task Force will be chaired and hosted by Japan. The Task Force aims to develop standards, guidelines or recommendations, as appropriate, for foods derived from biotechnology or traits introduced into foods by biotechnology, on the basis of scientific evidence, risk analysis and having regard, where appropriate, to other legitimate factors relevant to the health of consumers and the promotion of fair practices in the food trade.
Purpose of the Workshops
The Ad Hoc Task Force on Foods Derived from Biotechnology provides New Zealand and other members of Codex the opportunity to forge international agreement on the essential principles that should govern the regulation of new types of foods. The challenge for Codex will be to construct standards or guidelines that deliver a consistent outcome but are flexible enough to allow countries to implement according to domestic needs.
Participation
MAF Policy Division of the New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry sought the views of interested parties on the criteria and principles that should form the basis of any international standards or guidelines in this area.
Martech Consulting Group was invited to facilitate two workshops using its Stakeholder Needs Analysis Programme technique (SNAP) to which MAF invited a wide range of organisations to participate. The workshops were free to participants and those who took up the invitation are listed in Appendix 3 at pages 43 and 44.
Thirty four participants from three categories
- Consumers
- Producers, Manufacturers, Marketers and Retailers
- Research
Participated in twin workshops in held Auckland and Wellington during February 2000. Government representatives sat in as observers in each workshop so as to be able to follow the debate and make first-hand interpretations of issues as they were raised by participants.
2. Briefing Guideline – as provided to participants
“The statutes of Codex restrict its work to the development of food standards, codes of practice and guidelines.
Codex deals specifically with the effects on people of the food they consume, but not with wider issues such as the effects of agricultural production on the environment.
The work of the Codex Task Force is expected to focus on developing standards or guidelines on the safety of foods derived from biotechnology. We would like you to assist by:
- defining as you see the situation the most important safety and related issues that should be the basis for any standards/guidelines developed, and also
- how you see these issues being addressed by Codex.”
Process and Layout of this document
The SNAP workshop process centres upon two base themes:
- Determination of the immediate issues that the participants saw as important and to be taken into consideration in any framework for the development of regulations and standards for foods derived from biotechnology. The premise in this is that if the factors cited are ignored, they could pre-empt actions for the success of future regulations and standards. As items are cited, these are noted on flip charts which now form the first section of the detailed workshop findings – see appendices 1 and 2 at pages 12 and 26.
After discussion, each participant is asked to provide an anonymous list of their observations. Scores were attributed according to the number of times an item was cited by participants. The full list of items raised is included in the appendices pages of workshop details – see pages 21 and 37.
- In the second segment of the workshop, the participants were asked to identify the important strategic issues that they saw as important for a future improved situation. These items were arrived at after participants were asked to build a mental picture of a future position as part of their vision for safety standards in foods from biotechnology by Year 2020.
Ranking was determined by a simple vote wherein participants were asked to vote on the top ranked items, with the highest ranking being given approximately half of the total vote value each had. The purpose in this is to focus attention upon the items that are seen to be of the greatest importance. The full list of items cited as of strategic importance in achieving their 2020 visions are listed in pages of the appendices of workshop details – see pages 16 and 31.
As we believe emphasis should be upon how the future should be addressed, the order of presentation in the document is to first show the items that are seen to be important to the future, and then follow these be showing the immediate issues. In some instances the limitations are a mirror of a future strategic objective.
In total, participants raised close to 500 observations that have now been consolidated down to the nine Strategic Importance items and ten Immediate Issues. These are displayed in the two bar charts on the following pages. The tables following show the detailed headings from each workshop. All participants had the same number of voting points in arriving at the ‘final vote’ scores and ‘total mentions’ scores.
By reference to the detailed findings, each heading can be tracked back to individual observations.
The intention of the Pareto chart (follows the two bar charts) is to illustrate how addressing six of the ten ‘immediate issues’ will meet over 80 percent of the total listed.
As a final step, the participants were asked to share their views as to how they might go about achieving the top scoring Strategic Importance Issues. This section follows the summary of the main findings. The majority of these final observations came from the Auckland workshop as a time constraint prevented a similar level of input from the Wellington participants. Notwithstanding this difference, a key observation is made from the Wellington participants.
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Dr Sharon Adamson
Manager,
Innovation Policy
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
PO Box 2526
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NEW ZEALAND
Phone: +64 4 894 0618
Fax: +64 4 4 894 0741
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