London Workshop 28-29th July 2007

On the 28th and 29th July 2007 the first workshop was held at the NCVO centre in north London. There were 14 participants from the UK, Germany, Belgium, Czech Republic, Georgia, India and Australia.

Over the course of the two days, the participants heard presentations covering a wide range of topics related to the dispute. These included;

• An analysis of the outcome of the dispute and its implications on developing countries.
• The role of civil society groups in the WTO dispute and specifically experiences from the WTO Bite Back coalition and the from the submission of an amicus curiae brief from public interest groups.
• The history and implementation of traceability and labelling rules around the world. Plus an examination on the near impossibility of making such rules work in a country like India.
• Details of a the TRIPS and the Environmental Intermediaries Programme run by the Quakers

The two days of discussion were really useful and the participants all found the presentations, discussions and organisation as either goo or excellent. The most useful aspects of the workshop were the learning and sharing of perspectives on what is a very complex topic. having legal experts Alice Palmer and Ujjwal Kumar present , really helped
Those from Europe really found having hearing about both the dispute and wider issues of international legislation on GMOs from and Indian perspective particularly valuable