Kapuscinski Honored with World's Preeminent Marine Conservation Award
http://www.seagrant.umn.edu/seiche/dec.01/art03.html

'Safety First' for Genetically Modified Organisms
http://www.seagrant.umn.edu/seiche/dec.01/art01.html

ISEES Director and Scholar receive US AID award
Anne Kapuscinski, Wansuk Senanan, and collaborators were awarded one of five nation-wide grants by US AID for their proposal, Thailand Transgenic Fish and Biodiversity Program: Risk Assessment Research and Capacity Building, a four-year project.

The project will generate the first scientific data on potential safety or risk to biodiversity of introducing growth-enhanced transgenic tilapia. The Thai government has discouraged several inquiries to introduce such fish partly due to lack of case-specific risk assessment data and insufficient national capacity to evaluate and regulate genetically engineered organisms. To address these concerns, Kapuscinski and Senanan will quantify the likelihood of gene flow from transgenic to feral tilapia and assess gene flow consequences by measuring if transgenic individuals, compared to feral tilapia, pose lower, equal or higher risk to native fish species through food competition.

They will also build capacity among scientists, regulators, and environmental leaders of Thailand and neighboring countries in science-based risk assessment and management of genetically engineered organisms. Outcomes will enhance Thailand's role as a regional biotech and biosafety leader with the capacity to share scientific and regulatory expertise and information with other nations.

The Governance of Genetically Modified Marine Organisms Project combines the expertise of ISEES Director, Dr. Anne Kapuscinski, with the broader efforts of the Institute in biosafety science and policy. The goal of this project is to improve U.S. environmental governance of marine GMOs in order to protect marine biodiversity from new risks posed by releases of marine GMOs. The project aims to address marine GMOs ranging from finfish and shellfish to algae. Viewing successful governance as a three-legged stool, project activities aim to strengthen the "legs" of government, industry and the public in proactive safety governance of marine GMOs. This project involves three major activities.

First, we seek to improve the ecological basis of government regulation of marine GMOs through a focus on marine ecology, transparency, and precaution. This activity will focus on the United States, although some results may be helpful in other places.

Second, we will increase the scientific reliability of risk assessment and shift the burden of demonstrating ecological safety from government regulators to the party proposing to commercialize or release a marine GMO.

Finally, we will publish on-line and printed policy reports on GMOs and marine conservation for international distribution to policy makers and regulators, the media, the private sector, and educators. This series, The Marine Biotechnology Briefs, is available at http://www.fw.umn.edu/isees/MarineBrief/gmmobrf.htm.

As a part of her 2001 Pew Marine Conservation Fellowship, the Institute's Director, Anne Kapuscinski, is charged with creating policy briefs on marine biotechnology. These papers will be published on-line, and are intended to be understood by a general audience. The policy briefs are to encourage broader knowledge of the marine conservation implications of marine biotechnology, the policies that regulate these technologies, and recommendations that can improve the effectiveness of their governance. These reports will preview the latest scientific and policy developments regarding marine GMOs. The first brief will be posted on our website in Winter, 2002.

A separate policy report is the result of a collaboration between Anne Kapuscinski and the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology. The Pew Initiative sponsored Dr. Kapuscinski to draft a paper on transgenic aquatic species, focusing on fish, in the United States. The completed paper, informed by Dr. Kapuscinski's contributions, is available in PDF by clicking here.

The Institute has developed a bibliography of sources relevant to our research in this project, which it is currently updating. The bibliography may be accessed here. If you have suggestions for additional appropriate citations, please let us know.

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