Developing countries need to be in a position to establish systems of governance that diligently and judiciously respond to national and international developments associated with biotechnology. The South Asia Biosafety Program is intended to support governments and their stakeholder communities as they continue to develop and respond to national policies and regulations governing biotechnology products to spur economic growth and food security while ensuring the protection of human health and the environment.

Modern biotechnology offers powerful new tools for improving agricultural productivity, environmental sustainability, and nutritional quality of staple foods. These new technologies are helping to guide more precise crop and livestock breeding efforts, to diagnose crop and livestock diseases, and to develop more effective livestock vaccines. New crop varieties developed using biotechnology are being rapidly adopted by millions of large and small farmers in both industrial and developing countries. From 1996 to 2003 a cumulative total of over 300 million hectares of biotech crops were planted globally in 21 countries and in 2003 more than 85% of the 7 million farmers benefiting from these crops were resource-poor farmers in developing regions.

The South Asia Biosafety Program (SABP), with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), is dedicated to assisting the Governments of Bangladesh and India in further strengthening institutional governance of biotechnology. The program builds on existing efforts to advise governments on enhancing and streamlining government systems to realize the benefits of agricultural biotechnology within a transparent, efficient and responsive regulatory framework that ensures the safety of new foods and animal feeds, and protects the environment.

Through a combination of public and private consultations, SABP activities are both responsive to local needs and are designed to add value to existing regulatory, communications and policy capacities within India and Bangladesh. This is being achieved by collaborations with ministries of agriculture, health, science and environment; district governments; national research and policy institutions; stakeholders in the agricultural sector; non-governmental organizations, farmers groups and other development agencies.

Over the next three years, SABP will work with its in-country partners to:

• Identify and respond to technical training needs for food, feed and environmental safety assessment.


• Develop a sustainable network of trained, authoritative local experts to communicate both the benefits and the concerns associated with new agricultural biotechnologies to farmers and other stakeholder groups.


• Facilitate systems for permitting the safe conduct of experimental field trials of new crops developed using biotechnology so that scientists and farmers can evaluate them.


• Raise the profile of biotechnology and biosafety on the policy agenda within India and to address the policy issues within the overall context of economic and agricultural development, international trade and environmental sustainability.