# Council Decision (CFSP) 2015/259 of 17 February 2015 in support of activities of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in the framework of the implementation of the EU Strategy against Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Division 5: Toward the development of standardised analytical methods for the analysis of biological toxins

Extent: E+W+S+N.I.

Biological toxins are regulated under the Biological Weapons Convention (‘BWC’). Two biological toxins (ricin and saxitoxin) are also listed in the CWC as chemical weapons and are closely regulated. Other biological toxins may also fall under the CWC's general purpose criteria against the use of toxic agents in warfare.
The robust verification regime of the CWC is absent in the BWC. Under the CWC, inspectors are empowered to take samples and perform on-site analysis (if possible; often not possible for biological toxins) or send them to off-site laboratories. Off-site laboratory analysis requires sophisticated analytical equipment as well as methods and either reference materials or data.
For this project, the OPCW Laboratory and partner laboratories will:
prepare/acquire reference materials,
conduct round-robin exercises,
write and validate recommended operating procedures (ROPs) for the analysis of biological toxins,
collect reference data from partner laboratories,
share ROPs and reference data with partner laboratories and the scientific community,
evaluate analytical procedures/detection kits that can be used on-site to guide decisions on off-site analysis and as a protective component for inspectors on-site.

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Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eudn/2015/259/annex/division/3/division/4/division/5 (the official version)
Page: https://openlegislation.uk/eu-decision-2015-259/annex/division-3/division-4/division-5
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives.