Legal aspects of exchange, use and conservation of farm animal genetic resources

This report is a background study for the FAO commissioned study &lsquo;Exchange, Use and <br />Conservation of Animal Genetic Resources: Policy and Regulatory Options&rsquo;. It discusses the existing legal regulations that apply to Animal Genetic Resources (AnGR) and how the challenges in exchange, conservation and sustainable use of AnGR can be dealt with by the use of regulatory means. <br /><br />AnGR is scarcely addressed in existing genetic resources law and policy, which is mostly focused on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture and on genetic resources and biological diversity in general. In exploring how AnGR could be regulated, the report argues that it is important to consider how the animal sector differs from the plant sector, where law is well developed. It lists a number of key differences, which include the following: farm animal breeders are interested in individual animals and populations, while a plant variety is the main focus of plant breeders for animal breeding, diversity within populations is most important and it is much harder to introduce new genes than for plants biological differences require different approaches to conservation, breeding and use institutional capacity for AnGR conservation is much more limited in developing countries, animal breeding programmes are often less developed than those for plants the centres of diversity for AnGR are not as clearly defined as for plantsThe report argues that international, regional, and national law along with customary law are all relevant to regulation of AnGR and&nbsp;analyses a range of potential regulatory measures to address the access, exchange, conservation and sustainable use of AnGR. These include measures for: breeding laws import and export regulations model/standard material transfer agreements bilateral exchange agreements patent law sui generis intellectual property rights to AnGR livestock keepers&rsquo; rights