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

¹ Any per­son who handles ge­net­ic­ally mod­i­fied or­gan­isms dir­ectly in the en­vir­on­ment must take the re­quired tech­nic­al, or­gan­isa­tion­al and staff­ing meas­ures to pre­vent un­desired mix­ing with non-ge­net­ic­ally mod­i­fied or­gan­isms; in par­tic­u­lar, he or she must:

a.

ob­serve the re­quired dis­tances for pro­duc­tion that does not use ge­net­ic­ally mod­i­fied or­gan­isms;

b.

clean all equip­ment and ma­chines thor­oughly after use in ac­cord­ance with re­cog­nised meth­ods, if they are also used for non-ge­net­ic­ally mod­i­fied or­gan­isms;

c.

take pre­cau­tions to pre­vent losses of ge­net­ic­ally mod­i­fied or­gan­isms;

d.

keep the rel­ev­ant in­form­a­tion about the hand­ling and for­ward it to the re­cip­i­ents in an ap­pro­pri­ate form.

² Any per­son who handles ge­net­ic­ally mod­i­fied or­gan­isms dir­ectly in the en­vir­on­ment must, in ex­cep­tion­al events, doc­u­ment losses of ge­net­ic­ally mod­i­fied or­gan­isms and take ap­pro­pri­ate meas­ures to re­store the ori­gin­al con­di­tions.

³ Any per­son who mar­kets ge­net­ic­ally mod­i­fied or­gan­isms must have an ap­pro­pri­ate qual­ity con­trol sys­tem, which en­sures, in par­tic­u­lar, that:

a.

weak points at which mix­tures or con­fu­sions could oc­cur are re­cog­nised;

b.

the re­quired tech­nic­al, or­gan­isa­tion­al and staff­ing meas­ures to pre­vent mix­tures are es­tab­lished and en­forced;

c.

reg­u­lar checks are car­ried out to ex­am­ine the work­ab­il­ity of the meas­ures;

d.

the per­sons re­spons­ible are ad­equately trained;

e.

com­plete re­cords are kept.

⁴ Any per­son who mar­kets ge­net­ic­ally mod­i­fied or­gan­isms or products made from such or­gan­isms must:

a.

provide writ­ten in­form­a­tion of the cor­res­pond­ing unique iden­ti­fi­er, in ac­cord­ance with the An­nex to the Com­mis­sion Reg­u­la­tion (EC) No 65/2004 of 14 Janu­ary 2004²¹ es­tab­lish­ing a sys­tem for the de­vel­op­ment and as­sign­ment of unique iden­ti­fi­ers for ge­net­ic­ally mod­i­fied or­gan­isms, or, if this is lack­ing, the iden­tity of the or­gan­isms, giv­ing the es­sen­tial char­ac­ter­ist­ics, if the or­gan­isms and products re­quire la­belling in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 10;

b.

provide the name and ad­dress of the per­son from whom fur­ther in­form­a­tion can be ob­tained;

c.

for­ward all fur­ther rel­ev­ant in­form­a­tion that comes from their own sup­pli­er, in par­tic­u­lar such in­form­a­tion about the prop­er­ties of the or­gan­isms, if it is sig­ni­fic­ant for the pro­tec­tion of pro­duc­tion that does not use ge­net­ic­ally mod­i­fied or­gan­isms, and in­form­a­tion about the hand­ling in the en­vir­on­ment, to pre­vent the pro­vi­sions on the pro­tec­tion of pro­duc­tion that does not use ge­net­ic­ally mod­i­fied or­gan­isms be­ing con­tra­vened.

⁵ Any per­son who mar­kets ge­net­ic­ally mod­i­fied or­gan­isms or products made from such or­gan­isms must keep the fol­low­ing de­tails for five years:

a.

the in­form­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 4;

b.

the name and ad­dress of the re­cip­i­ent, but not those of the con­sumers;

c.

the name and ad­dress of the sup­pli­er.

⁶ Cor­res­pond­ing pro­vi­sions in the le­gis­la­tion on food­stuffs and ag­ri­cul­ture are re­served.