Stock-taking report: food biotechnology communication materials in the world
Background paper for the 2020 technical consultation meetings on developing a communication toolkit about food biotechnologies
Description:... During the Global Community Meeting on the FAO GM Foods Platform, held in September 2019, many participants expressed the strong need for a set of impartial and science-based communication materials that would address the communication challenges at a national level around food biotechnologies.
To address this need, FAO, in collaboration with Kenya’s National Biosafety Authority and scientific and consumer education/communication experts, initiated the process of developing a communication toolkit on food biotechnologies. The toolkit is to be used by governmental agencies that assess the safety of foods derived from biotechnologies to better communicate with the general public. The toolkit will contain a series of guiding documents with various sample materials. The target users of the toolkit itself are the food safety and biosafety competent authorities in the government sector, whereas the sample materials are for the general public.A step-by-step approach has been planned to develop the sample materials with the first steps being the analysis of existing consumer education and communication materials worldwide, the identification of gaps in the information that is needed for consumers to gain a better understanding, and the selection of consumer education and communication materials to be used as a basis to develop sample materials. This document summarizes these initial steps.
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