After 11 years of negotiations, there was another round in the question of trade of GMOs in Curitiba, Brazil. Delegates from 132 countries who have signed the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety met for the Third Meeting of Parties (MOP3). One of the main issues was the labelling of GMOs (Article 18). The last watering down of the text, orchestrated by the US and industry, was carried out by Mexico and Paraguay. After 4 days of intensive negotiations, which went into 6 a.m. in the morning of Friday in the "friends of the chair" drafting group and lasted until 8 p.m., a last minute agreement was made on the contentious issue of identification and documentation of international shipments of GMOs in food, feed and for processing.

March 2006:  http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/imf/brasil/2006/

MOP3 Biosafety Protocol negotiations in Curitiba, 13-17 March 2006:  http://www.haerlin.org/bsp/

Curitiba 2006 Background and links:  http://biotech.indymedia.org/or/2006/03/4866.shtml

COP8: Eighth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity
20-31 March 2006 in Curitiba, Brazil

 http://www.iisd.ca/biodiv/cop8/

Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD): Anti-Ministerial meeting photos 28 March 2006:  http://www.midiaindependente.org/pt/blue/2006/03/349554.shtml
 http://brasil.indymedia.org/pt/blue/2006/03/349839.shtml