The Board of the Academy of Finland announced this week that it has taken the decision to launch seven new research programmes in 2003 - one of which will focus on the societal and health effects of genetically modified organisms.
A total of €41.3 million has been earmarked for the research programmes but the total allocation will be confirmed when the state budget for 2003 is approved at the end of this year.
As a clear indication of the increasing concerns linked to GMOs, the academy writes this week that the programme on the environmental, societal and health effects of GMOs is closely related to the ethical debate that has been waged on the safety of these new technologies.
The focus of the programme is on the environmental and health effects of GMOs, 'an area on which current understanding is still inadequate,' writes the academy this week. The project will have a strong multidisciplinary orientation so that not only the ecological and health effects of GMOs but also ethical and socio-economic considerations, as well as questions of risk assessment, will be covered.
Each year the Academy of Finland spends around one-fifth of its research appropriations to support multidisciplinary research programmes. Often jointly sponsored by Finnish and foreign-based research funding bodies, the programmes aim not only to generate new research results but also to promote networking among individual researchers and research teams and to support researcher training. Foreign researchers and research teams are also eligible to participate.