Team:TU-Delft/Meet with RIVM

During May, we had the opportunity to meet the people from the GMO department of the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment(RIVM). The aim of that meeting was to discuss about:

• current regulations
• how is it perceived from the related parties?
• what possible changes should we make for the ideal regulation?

Balance of regulation vs. innovation

1. Do you get complaints from researchers on the current legislation? Does it impede innovation?
   Researchers will complain when safety rules are delaying their work, which is to be expected, but we don’t see it very often.
2. Is the regulation often revised?
   An update mostly entails making a study proceed with biosafety level 1 instead of level 2 (i.e. requiring less safety rules). We evaluate risk assessments case by case, the overall regulation is not updated often. However, since the biosafety officer platform is a very small community, all biosafety officers will hear about adaptations we made with respect to one case and communicate that to their researchers.