Genetically Modified Varieties remain a contentious issue for the OECD seed schemes. Since the annual technical meeting in July 2000 several consultations have been made to reach an agreement to initiate an experiment and suggest acceptable tolerance levels to member countries.  In an official document (AGRA/CA (2000) 10) circulated in November 2000, the OECD reported the progress of the genetically modified seed issues. Failing to reach an agreement at the Begnins (Switzerland) meeting, the Committee submits no proposal for an experiment to be endorsed. A brief summary of the proposal, contentious issues and future actions is given below.

The Proposal
Since September 1999 several meetings were held on the presence of  'adventitious' genetically modified seed in non-genetically modified seed based on the initiative of FIS to the OECD Seed Schemes. Co-operation was also sought from the International Seed Testing Association (ISTA) and the Association of Official Seed Analysts (AOSA) to initiate a large coordinated experiment to detect the presence of GMOs in non-GM seed. Based on experimental results, it is anticipated to introduce rules in the OECD seed certification schemes. To this effect the OECD Annual Meeting in 2000 established a Working Group on Genetically Modified Seed Issues.

Difficulties
There are some difficulties to initiate a comprehensive OECD experiment and discussions are still in progress. The main issues of the OECD proposal still under discussion are:
· New testing methods to be used for GM detection, with new sampling procedures and adequate accuracy requirements. In most cases, traits to be tested have no links with the morphological characters used for description of the variety. Availability of primers, reporting of results and protection of intellectual property remain major problems.
· Which species should be tested first? In principle it has been agreed to include a limited number of species of worldwide interest such as maize, soybean, cotton and oilseed rape.
· Which 'transgenic events' should be covered? The range of officially approved transgenic events varies from country to country as well as approval procedures, tolerances and unauthorized domestic events. This is the zero threshold level which raises an interpretation problem. For certification, the analysis would benefit greatly if it covers all events.
· At what level to set thresholds (and associated confidence levels) for presence of GMOs in non-GM seed? How do they relate to varietal purity standards presently in force? Are the current certification standards and requirements adequate, or should they be supplemented with more stringent standards (isolation, previous cropping)? Switzerland has agreed to 0.5% threshold and the EU is also implementing an interim 0.5 % threshold as well. As a compromise, the concept of 'multiple' thresholds (1%, 0.5% and nil) was proposed by the Advisory Group meeting held in August 2000 (USA) after the Working Group failed to reach a conclusion, but not all members accepted this in October 2000 (Switzerland). However, a more general and statistically oriented formula was proposed which might be considered in future discussions.
· Which institutional framework to apply? What type of collaboration should be established between companies, scientific institutions and governments? How to implement the recently introduced voluntary accreditation schemes for seed testing? No country has objected to recognize accreditation as far as it is provided by the Schemes.

        The OECD Seed Schemes experiment on the presence of GMOs in conventional seeds would try to provide an acceptable response to these economically important, but politically sensitive questions.

Future actions
The meeting held near Geneva in October 2000 closed without reaching an agreement on the terms of an experiment in which countries would participate voluntarily. The committee did not prepare any document to be endorsed and eventually adopted by the Council of the OECD.
        All countries agreed to continue the dialogue. Argentina, Canada, Chile and USA decided to start the experiment as a joint initiative within the OECD. Both courses of action, continuing the discussions and conducting an interim experiment are considered based on the papers of the OECD Secretariat. ISTA will collaborate with all countries on harmonization whereas FIS will continue the discussions with OECD and countries which started the experiment.
        In addition, a meeting of Working Group on Genetically Modified Seed Issues was convened in January 2001 based on the revised documents AGR/CA/S (2000) 27 and 28. The methods used and the results were reported to the Annual Meeting of the OECD Seed Schemes held on 25-29 June 2001. Source: OECD. (Editor: The next issue of Seed Info will report on the progress made on these contentious issues)