A Joint FAO/WHO Consultation on the Assessment of Hiotechnol- ogy in Food Production and Processing as Related to Food Safety was held in Geneva from 5 to 10 November 1990; the participants are listed in Annex 1. The Consultation was opened by Dr J. .Rochon, Director, Division of Health Protection and Promotion, WHO, on behalf of the Directors-General of FAO and WHO. In welcoming the participants, Dr Rochon drew attention to the long history of the application of biotechnology to food production and processing. This went back more than 8000 years, so that the food industry was one of the oldest users of biotechnological products and processes.Since the nineteenth century, the science of biotechnology had developed more rapidly than ever before and particularly so over the past decade. While there were many applications of biotechnology in areas such as drugs, the new technologies were also potentially capable of revolutionizing the world's food supply. Enormous improvements were possible in both the quantity and quality of food available. Contemporary techniques of genetic modification made it possible both to speed up the classical processes of plant and animal breeding and to effect interspecies gene transfers not possible by classical methods.