Co-Extra Final Conference : Summaries and Synthesis

Generally speaking, GMO production and use is a quite controversial socially debated item around the world. This worldwide controversy is also facing the obligation of free trade as made mandatory by international treaties like the WTO. It was not the purpose of Co-Extra to participate to these debates but, as a EU policy support research program, to provide all technical, economic,scientific and legal basis for providing the European stakeholders with accurate data for making decision and keeping the freedom of choice to European producers and consumers. Herewith you will find the most important results and messages from the several Work packages of Co-Extra, both in terms of scientific results and practical implementation issues and solutions. Some issues are still pending and will need further research, some of them also depending on the decisions to be taken by policy makers on, for instance, seeds thresholds and fields’ co-existence to be harmonized or not to the European level. As a summary of the Co-Extra results, this summary does not show all results, but more details can be found on the Co-Extra website (www.coextra.eu), particularly in the on-line deliverables and in the peer reviewed papers published by Co-Extra members