Ordinance
on the Handling of Organisms in the Environment
(Release Ordinance, RO)

1 This Or­din­ance reg­u­lates the hand­ling of or­gan­isms, their meta­bol­ic products and wastes in the en­vir­on­ment, in par­tic­u­lar the hand­ling of ge­net­ic­ally mod­i­fied, patho­gen­ic or ali­en or­gan­isms.

2 Hand­ling or­gan­isms in con­tained sys­tems is reg­u­lated by the Con­tain­ment Or­din­ance of 9 May 2012⁵ (Con­tainO).⁶

3 The pro­tec­tion of per­son­nel when work­ing with mi­croor­gan­isms is gov­erned by the Or­din­ance of 25 Au­gust 1999⁷ on Pro­tec­tion of Em­ploy­ees from Dan­ger­ous Or­gan­isms.

⁴ The mar­ket­ing of patho­gen­ic or­gan­isms:

a.

for ap­plic­a­tion as plant pro­tec­tion products in ag­ri­cul­ture is reg­u­lated by the Plant Pro­tec­tion Products Or­din­ance of 18 May 2005⁸;

b.

for ap­plic­a­tion as biocid­al products, the Biocid­al Products Or­din­ance of 18 May 2005⁹.

⁵ For the mar­ket­ing of ali­en in­sects, mites and nem­at­odes for use as plant pro­tec­tion products in ag­ri­cul­ture as well as for ex­per­i­ment­al re­leases of such or­gan­isms, the Or­din­ance of 18 May 2005 on Plant Pro­tec­tion Products ap­plies.

⁶ This Or­din­ance does not ap­ply to hand­ling or­gan­isms:

a.

in clin­ic­al tri­als on hu­man be­ings;

b.¹⁰

lis­ted in the Or­din­ance is­sued by the Fed­er­al De­part­ment of Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs, Edu­ca­tion and Re­search and the Fed­er­al De­part­ment of the En­vir­on­ment, Trans­port, En­ergy and Com­mu­nic­a­tions based on Art­icles 4 para­graph 3 of the Plant Health Or­din­ance of 31 Oc­to­ber 2018¹¹, or for which the two afore­men­tioned de­part­ments have des­ig­nated a pro­tec­ted area based on Art­icle 24 para­graph 2 of the Plant Health Or­din­ance;

c.¹²

that are lis­ted as po­ten­tial quar­ant­ine or­gan­isms in the or­din­ance is­sued by the Fed­er­al Of­fice for Ag­ri­cul­ture (FO­AG) and the Fed­er­al Of­fice for the En­vir­on­ment (FOEN) based on Art­icle 5 para­graph 2 of the Plant Health Or­din­ance.