The Biosafety Clearing-House of the Cartagena Protocol on

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Tutorial on Finding information

The Biosafety Clearing-House of the Cartagena Protocol on

Biosafety

Welcome to this tutorial module on finding information in the Biosafety Clearing-House. In this module you will learn

how to search for information through the Finding Information section and be familiarized with the common

features of its pages.

The main page of the Finding Information section contains a welcome message and a list of the information available which is divided into two groups.

The left-hand group lists categories of National Records. This information is submitted by Governments as mandated by Article 20 of the Protocol.

The right-hand group lists categories of Reference Records. This information is submitted by general BCH registered users.

Both groups of information also appear in the left-hand menu. To access a searchable database of interest, click on the link either on the Main

page or in the left-hand menu.

By clicking on a category of information underneath the Compiled Information heading, you will access a listing of information rather than a searchable database.

This link, for example, allows you to access compiled lists of all National Focal Points under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. Each list is updated weekly.

Back to the Finding Information page: if you know the ID number of a BCH record, you can directly access it by entering

the number here and clicking on the ‘Go’ button.

If you click on a link, either on the Main page or in the left-hand menu, your will go to the relevant search page.

Let’s use the “National Contacts” database as an example.

This page provides some fields to define a search. You may use one or more fields. However, the more fields you use, the more specific the search result will be.

If you wish to access all of the records in the database, click on the ‘Browse all records’ button at the bottom of the search page.

Otherwise, when you have selected your search criteria, click on one of the “Search now” buttons that appear both at the top and at the

bottom of the search page.

- Biosafety Clearing-House Focal Point

On the search pages, most fields contain pre-defined terms, or “controlled vocabulary”, to narrow your search.

To access this “controlled vocabulary”, click on one of the blue arrows and a drop-down menu will appear from which you can select from a choice of terms.

Other fields, like for example “Keyword search”, do not contain “controlled vocabulary” and allow you to directly type the information you wish to search for.

Ministry of Environment

When searching fields containing “controlled vocabulary” in dropdown menus, you can select multiple terms by using the function “Allow multiple selections”

indicated by the green arrow to the right of the field.

When you click the “Allow multiple selections” arrow, the field expands and the “controlled vocabulary” appears in a small window instead of a drop-down menu.

The list is usually longer than what is visible in the window and so a scroll down vertical bar is provided on the right-hand side of the window.

When in this mode you may select multiple entries by holding down the Control (Ctrl) key which is at the bottom left corner of your keyboard,

if you are using a Windows operating system. Use the Apple key if you are using a Macintosh operating system.

By way of example, we will search the BCH and the Cartagena Protocol National Focal Points of the Bahamas, Barbados and Belize.

Click on the green arrow beside the ‘Select a country’ field and the list of countries will appear in a small window.

Use the scroll down vertical bar until you reach Bahamas and click on it. Scroll down to Barbados, hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and click on it.

Repeat the same for Belize. Now the three countries will be highlighted.

Next, click on the green arrow beside the ‘Type of National Contact’ field and a list of categories to choose from will appear in another small window.

Click on “Biosafety Clearing-House Focal Point”, hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard, click on “Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety National Focal Point”

and the two categories will be highlighted.

Click on the ‘Search Now’ button to retrieve your results.

Some fields are common to many search pages:“Geographical areas”, “Date of record” and “Keyword search”

are the most common.

In “Geographical areas” you may select one or more countries OR one or more country groups but not both fields in the same search.

When searching by ‘Date of record’ you may select a time interval that will narrow the search from the last day to the last year.

In searching by keyword you may type one or more words in the field and separate them with AND or OR.

Environment OR Agriculture

corn

Note that keyword searches are only effective if you know the exact word or words you are looking for. Variations upon words or use of synonyms will not retrieve the

desired results. For example, if you enter “corn”, records containing the word “maize” may not be retrieved.

Let’s now explore a different feature which is active on some of the search pages. We will move to the search page for “Country's Decisions and other

Communications” by clicking on the link in the left-hand menu.

On this page, if you click on the dropdown menu for the “Type of living modified organisms” field, the list that appears is a set of additional filters rather than

“controlled vocabulary”.

By selecting one of these filters (or more than one if you use the multiple selection option) additional search fields will appear from where you may further narrow your

search by adding one or more additional criteria.

For example, let’s say you want to find all of the decisions available in the BCH on maize that has been genetically modified with “insect resistance” traits.

Click on the green arrow beside the “Type of living modified organisms” field. A window listing all the available search filters will open.

Click on “Filter by introduced or Modified Traits”, hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and click on “Filter by Parental organism (common name)”.

The two filters selected will be highlighted and two new fields will appear below.

Scroll down the menu of the “Introduced or modified traits” field and click on “Insect resistance”.

Scroll down the menu of the “Parental organism (common name)” field and click on “Maize”.

Click on the ‘Search Now’ button to retrieve your results.

There are some features in the ‘Finding Information’ section that help the user to cross-reference a record with other records in different categories. To understand

how this works, let’s go to the search page for “LMOs, genes and organisms”.

Click on the arrow beside the ‘Registries’ field, select ‘LMO-Unique Identifiers Registry (LMO-UIds)’ from the drop-down menu and

click the ‘Search Now’ button.

The results page shows all the LMO records contained in this database. By selecting a record on the list, the LMO information will appear.

You will notice that there are 3 tabs at the top of the record,the one highlighted contains information on the selected LMO.

If you click on the ‘Decisions on the LMO’ tab, a table will list all of the countries that have taken a decision on this specific LMO.

A green square box with an “i” on it provides a link to the decision and marks the nature of the decision in the table: ‘Domestic Use’ for food, feed or processing;

‘Import’ for food, feed or processing, ‘Environmental Release’ and ‘Other’.

In some cases you will see that classification is pending and the record is highlighted in yellow. This is because the record does not specify the use for which the LMO has

been approved and a link is provided to access the decision.

If you click on the ‘Risk Assessments’ tab, a list of all the risk assessment records that have been made available in the BCH on this specific LMO will appear.

Click on the risk assessment of interest to access the relevant record.

The same type of cross-referencing of records is provided in the ‘Country's Decisions and other Communications’ category.From that search page, click on the ‘Browse all records’ button.

The results page shows all of the records contained in this section of the database. By selecting a record on the list, the decision information will appear.

You will notice that there are 2 tabs at the top of the record. The one highlighted contains information on the selected record.

If you click on the ‘LMO Information’ tab, you will access the relevant record in the ‘LMO-Unique Identifiers Registry’ that the decision is based on.

From this tab you will again see the 3 tabs at the top of the record as was previously discussed.

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End of the tutorial on Finding information