A General Surveillance plan to monitor for unanticipated adverse effects of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on human health and the environment is required as part of the EU legislation for imported and cultivated GMOs.Imported GM products: Operators involved in the import, handling and processing of grain commodities entering the EU have monitoring procedures in place to survey products and are organised in associations across the EU Member States. They can therefore be considered as the best placed to monitor for potential unanticipated adverse effects linked to imports of GM products into the EU. Recognising this, the Plant Biotechnology Industry has established a collaboration to cover General Surveillance of grain commodity imports with the relevant associations, which is coordinated by EuropaBio, the European Association for Bioindustries.Cultivated GM plants: Monitoring for unanticipated adverse effects should take place in agronomic zones representative of commercial GM crop cultivation. Farmers are therefore considered to be the most valuable sources of information when it comes to General Surveillance of GM crop cultivation, due to their extensive experience with and direct involvement in cultivation. Acknowledging this, the Plant Biotechnology Industry has developed a harmonised general surveillance approach based on farmer questionnaires.

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Summary A method is presented for determination of Water‐Dispersible Protein, using a Hamilton Beach Drinkmaster #30 modified to accommodate Waring Blendor blades and cups. The probable sources of error in the method are discussed, and the precision of the method is shown, based on the results obtained in three laboratories using six different Modified Hamilton Beach Blendors.

A collaborative study was made to compare AOAC method 2.057 for determination of water-insoluble organic nitrogen (WIN) with the slow-release nitrogen method adopted as official, first action in 1965. Both methods showed improvement in precision over the 1964 study. The betweenlaboratory standard deviation of the WIN method was 6.16 in the 1964 study and 1.03 in 1966; the slow-release method was 4.42 in 1964 and 0.65 in 1966. With the improved precision, the two methods will give significantly different results on some types of fertilizers. This difference will affect the calculation of the activity index of urea formaldehyde. It is recommended that both methods be retained in Official Methods of Analysis.

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