Objective
Specific Objectives
- Consolidate the operation of the European Network of GMO Laboratories and fully include the Accession Countries;
- Putting in place all the requirements to become a European Community Reference Laboratory under the GMO food and feed proposal;
- Provide ad hoc support to the Commission Services (DG ENVI, DG SANCO) as requested;
- Execute a number of validation studies aimed at the event-specific qualitative and quantitative detection of GMOs in raw materials and in processed foodstuffs. Execute a number of validation studies for the harmonisation of parts of these analysis such as e.g. on the extraction of nucleic acids;
- Organisation of training courses;
- Provide scientific solutions to problems related to statistical method;
- Work with international committees to achieve harmonisation between various proposals for sampling plans (ISO, CEN, USDA, ISTA);
- Implement the molecular register and develop a GMO Extranet containing the full dossiers for the placing on the market of GMO dossiers.
Planned Deliverables
- Signature of ENGL Consortium Agreement;
- Signed agreements with GMO companies on the transfer of GM-materials and methods to the JRC and to the ENGL;
- Submission of documents and technical annexes to CEN;
- Updated training manuals;
- Improved methods for GMO detection;
- Preparation of documents for total quality management;
- Deployment of a new molecular biology facility.
Specific deliverables to DGs:
- Advisory documents to DG SANCO, DG ENVI, EU scientific committees and international organisations;
- Final reports of validated methods for DNA extraction, protein quantification and GMO detection, identification and quantification;
- Development of guidance documents for sampling methods, specific for various areas: seeds, grains, processed foodstuff, final food products, implementation of trace ability regulation.
- As a result of the research:
- Introduction of new techniques in the laboratory (e.g. edge fragment cloning and sequencing, RFLP mapping, capillary electrophoresis);
- Publication of GMO specific sequences to allow event-specific detection;
- Publication of GMO characterisations;
- Publications in scientific journals and participation in international conferences;
- Deployment of a molecular register.
Summary of deliverables made by: 31/12/2001
Ad hoc support to commission services
- Support has been provided to DGSANCO on the new proposals for the GMO food and GMO feed regulation and on the proposed regulation for GMO trace ability;
- Further support has been provided to the proposal of a recommendation for the control of foodstuffs in 2002
- Support has been provided to DG ENVI by acting as a resource person for the implementation of the Cartagena protocol;
- Support has been provided to the scientific committee for plants and the scientific committee for foods.
European network of GMO laboratories
- Two plenary meetings and an 'ad hoc' meeting have been held
- A draft consortium agreement has been prepared and discussed.
- The Internet Bulletin board has been finalized and is currently publicly available.
Validation, sampling, data analysis
- Aventis T25 Real Time PCR analysis reporting, and publication.
- Contacts have been made with other GMO industries to provide the JRC and the Network with GM-materials and methods;
- Roundup Ready Soya in animal feed, ELISA-validation study, analysis, reporting advise to method improvement;
- Report on comparison sampling strategies and support to CEN on sampling, validation;
- Report on sampling strategies for final "supermarket shelf" products;
- Compendium of detection methods presented to DG SANCO.
Molecular register, database, extranet, I.T. activities
- Notification system/Electronic SNIF. The WWW Site http://biotech.jrc.it(opens in new window) has been updated;
- Extranet. The development of an Extranet to link member states has not been further elaborated. Layout and navigation plan prototype available at http://bepc44/GMO%20Extranet/
- Molecular Register. In coordination with CNR BARI, the operational platform for the molecular register has been defined, and is now available. The Molecular register database structure has been defined.
- A review of tools and databases relevant to allergens has been performed, after a workshop held at Ispra and organised by the IHCP on the ultimate allergenicity database.
Output Indicators and Impact
- Fully operational ENGL network and deployment of the European Community
Reference Laboratory.
- Accepted research programmes, eventually including a Marie Curie training site, to be carried out within the ENGL.
- Participation in many expert group meetings including those of various scientific committees and CEN;
- Advice in inter-service consultations;
- Validated analytical methods;
- Publications in scientific journals and participation in international conferences.
Summary of the project
The project aims at the provision of scientific and technical support to the European Commission services that are involved in the legislation concerning genetically modified organisms (GMO's). As such, the IHCP-14 project contains a large amount of pre-normative activities, as well as activities that aim at assisting EC services in the process of implementation the legislations approved. At the hearth of the activity, there is the European Network of GMO laboratories (ENGL) that has been practically set up in June 2000 and that since then has been structured along a number of themes that enforcement laboratories have prioritised. A large variety of topical working groups have been set-up, for instance in the area of sampling foodstuff or grains for the presence of GMOs, validation of methods for the detection, identification and quantification of GMOs, or in the initiation of a project on the creation of a molecular register that holds all the molecular information of EU approved GMOs. The appreciation of these activities by Member States Authorities and by EC services resulted in the designation of the JRC as a European Community Reference Laboratory in the area of GMOs (Regulation "GM Food and Feed", under discussion in the Parliament and then to be approved at Council level).
Consequently, the ENGL activities will be further developed to include these new tasks entrusted to it and to develop into a global GMO network with the emphasis of partners from Accession Countries. A solid consortium agreement and a challenging work programme must consolidate the role of the network in the last part of FP5 and throughout FP6. Likewise the activities in IHCP-14 will be managed as a complement to the activities of the ENGL network. This means that the laboratory facility will be further enlarged, that training courses will be organised, that a large number of protocols to measure GMO concentrations and to allow trace ability of GMO products in raw material as well as food and feed products will be validated, that appropriate sampling strategies will be defined along the food chain and that all these activities will be supported by the availability of appropriate molecular data and information databases, with the emphasis of a strong bio informatics activity.
Rationale
The project carries out the technical and scientific part of the duties of the European Commission mainly related to the Directive 1990/220/EEC and its amendment 2001/018/EEC (deliberate release and placing on the market of GMO's), regulation 258/97 (novel foods), regulation 49/2000 (threshold level) and the new proposed regulations on GMO food and feed and on trace ability.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology other engineering and technologies food technology
- natural sciences biological sciences biochemistry biomolecules nucleic acids
- natural sciences computer and information sciences databases
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture grains and oilseeds
- agricultural sciences animal and dairy science domestic animals animal husbandry animal feed
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Coordinator
Ispra
Italy
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