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Sarah Lukie

Managing Director, Regulatory and Multilateral Affairs, Plant Biotechnology at CropLife International

Expert Bio

Sarah Lukie currently serves as the Managing Director for Regulatory and Multilateral Affairs, Plant Biotechnology, based at CropLife International (CLI) in Washington, DC.   In this role, Sarah works on the development of CLI’s positions and activities on regulatory and multilateral policy issues impacting the global agricultural biotechnology sector.  She has particular expertise representing the biotechnology industry in negotiation and implementation of various multilateral environmental agreements, such as the Cartagena Protocol on Biotechnology, the Nagoya-Kuala Lumpur Supplementary Protocol on Liability and Redress, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Codex Alimentarius.  Sarah leads a global effort to coordinate policy positions on a number of multilateral environmental agreements among the agricultural biotechnology industry, serving as the Secretariat to the Global Industry Coalition, a coalition of stakeholders participating in the implementation of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, as well as the Global Adventitious Presence Coalition, an international coalition of the “food chain” stakeholders working towards solutions to issues related to asynchronous approvals of agricultural biotechnology products around the world.  Additionally, Sarah serves as the Executive Director of the Compact, a legally binding arbitration process to provide States with a mechanism for seeking redress in the event that damage to biological diversity is caused by the release of a Living Modified Organism.

Sarah is a lawyer who has focused her legal work on assisting developing countries draft and implement their national biosafety frameworks in order to comply with the requirements of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.  As such, she has significant experience drafting biosafety policies, laws and regulations at the national level.  She also serves on a number of UN Liaison Groups and Committees, working to build the capacity of developing countries to regulate products of agricultural biotechnology with a science-based, predictable and transparent regulatory system.

Sarah is a Canadian who received her First Class Honors Bachelor Degree from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. She also studied international environmental law and obtained her law degree from the University of British Columbia, located in Vancouver, Canada.

Studies, Articles and Answers

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Question

Q: What is adventitious presence (AP)? And is it fixed by CPB?

Answered By Sarah Lukie - Jan 14, 2014

A: Within the context of biotech crops, adventitious presence or AP occurs when trace amounts of an agricultural biotech product that has not been approved for commercial use (e.g., research events, field trial escapes) by any competent government authority, but is found in the commercial crop or food supply despite best agricultural and manufacturing practices.  In the context of agricultural biotechnology, a similar concept of low level presence or LLP is defined as the unintentional, low level presence of an agricultural biotech product approved in one or more countries, but not yet appro [...]

How GMOs Are Made

Question

Q: what provisions have been allocated by g.m.seed producers to deal with cleanup of unwanted crops from neighbouring farms or recovery and eradication of cultivars if they are proven to cause harm?

Answered By Karin Dörgeloh, Ph.D. - May 08, 2015

A: GM seed producers, such as Bayer, go through lengthy testing with regulators to prove the safety of their GM product for humans, animals and the environment before being authorized to sell such GM seed by regulatory agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration and/or U.S. Department of Agriculture. Since the first plantings of commercialized GM seed in 1996 (19 years ago), it has not been proven to cause harm. Growers are free to choose the seed they wish to purchase and grow based on preference, regulations, agronomic considerations, etc. If, for instanc [...]

Answered By Sarah Lukie - May 01, 2015

A: While biotech crops have been planted for more than a decade on over four billion acres of land without causing any damage to biological diversity, the public continues to have questions about how they can be sure there are appropriate mechanisms in place to address the unlikely chance that these products could cause some kind of harm to the environment. The leading agricultural biotechnology provider companies — BASF, Bayers, Dow Agrosciences, DuPont, Monsanto and Syngenta — are addressing some of this concern by voluntarily offering a legally binding mechanism for seeking redres [...]

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