Since 2004, Professor Piet van der Meer has worked as an independent consultant in the fields of international and national environmental policies and regulations, with a particular specialisation on biotechnology regulation. Over the years, he has provided scientific and regulatory support for biotechnology regulation in over 50 countries and to many national and international organisations. He also teaches of the subject of biotechnology regulation as a guest professor at the University of Ghent and the Free University of Brussels (VUB).
Having trained as a biologist and a lawyer at the University of Leiden, Piet was in charge of biosafety/GMO regulation in the Netherlands from 1988 to 1999, a period during which he he was also actively involved in many international and EU fora. From 1999 to 2002, he managed the project “Implementation of National Biosafety Frameworks of the pre-accession countries in Central and Eastern Europe”, and from 2002 to 2004 he was the programme manager of the UNEP-GEF’s projects on the Implementation of National Biosafety Frameworks.