Biosafety Clearing-House Central Portal

The Biosafety Clearing-House (BCH) is an information exchange mechanism established by the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. The mechanism was established to facilitate the exchange of scientific, technical, environmental and legal information on, and experience with, living modified organisms between Parties and to assist Parties to implement the Protocol, taking into account the special needs of developing country Parties, in particular the least developed and small island developing States among them, and countries with economies in transition as well as countries that are centres of origin and centres of genetic diversity.

The Biosafety Clearing-House serves as a means through which information is made available for the purposes of paragraph 1 above. It provides access to information made available by the Parties relevant to the implementation of the Protocol. It also provides access, where possible, to other international biosafety information exchange mechanisms.

Each Party shall make available to the Biosafety Clearing-House any information required to be made available to the Biosafety Clearing-House under this Protocol, and:

• Any existing laws, regulations and guidelines for implementation of the Protocol, as well as information required by the Parties for the advance informed agreement procedure;

• Any bilateral, regional and multilateral agreements and arrangements;

• Summaries of its risk assessments or environmental reviews of living modified organisms generated, including, where appropriate, relevant information regarding products thereof, namely, processed materials that are of living modified organism origin, containing detectable novel combinations of replicable genetic material obtained through the use of modern biotechnology;

• Its final decisions regarding the importation or release of living modified organisms; and

• Reports submitted, including those on implementation of the advance informed agreement procedure.

Information that was sent to BCH Central Portal by Slovenia is available at Biosafety Clearing-House and National BCH.