MICCO is building a national BRC in Finland

As in many other countries, the economical, legal and institutional position of microbial culture collections in Finland needs improvement. The clinical collections are regulated by some laws and directives, but for collections of environmental and biotechnological origin, there is no common view or strategy. The collections are still maintained by research institutes and other small units, even single persons, while the modern times of bioeconomy, biohazards and biological diversity convention urge much more rigorous approach to microbial collections management. To improve the situation, the Finnish Microbial Resource Centre Organization, MICCO was founded in April 2010. MICCO is a registered association (http://www.micco.fi/) of four founding members VTTCC (WDCM 139), HAMBI (WDCM 779), ABM culture collection and VYH culture collection.

The main idea is to develop and secure the action and existence of Finnish culture collections. This is reached by communication and publishing towards authorities and the society, and by guidance and training amongst culture collections. MICCO started its action with an inauguration seminar “PROTECTING BIODIVERSITY BY MICROBIAL RESOURCE CENTRES” on 5.5.2011 in Helsinki. The speakers and audience were from the world culture collection community and from different Finnish governmental branches (see the presentations at MICCO home pages).  In the near future, MICCO will organize workshops for Finnish culture collections about “Best Practices in BRCs” and “Biosafety / Biosecurity”.