Red Tape, Media Stop Russia Growing GMO Crops
Date: 01-Mar-05
Country: RUSSIA
Author: Aleksandras Budrys
Russia currently does not produce GMOs on a commercial basis, although scientists have been carrying out experiments with genetic modification of livestock and plants for years.
Legislation allows imports of GMOs under special permits. So far such permits have been issued for 18 genetically modified food components for human consumption and 55 for animal feeds.
"There is no legislative ban on production of genetically modified crops, but all attempts to start cultivating them have failed ... as the existing scheme of registration (of domestically produced GMOs) makes such registration virtually impossible," said Konstantin Skryabin, director of the Biological Engineering centre at Russia's Academy of Sciences.
He told Reuters the centre had finished testing pest-resistant potatoes but was unable to collect all the necessary permits for their registration as bureaucrats kept advancing new demands.
"We expected to register the potatoes this year, but we were told that a couple more years of tests are needed," Skryabin said. "No one actually says 'no' -- there are just interminable delays."
"It appears that bureaucrats, who simply do not understand the essence of the problem, believe that it is more safe to change nothing."
PITCHFORKS VS TRACTORS
ISAAA, an industry backed group promoting biotech as a way to halt hunger, has said that last year 8.25 million farmers in 17 countries were involved in growing GMO crops on 81 million hectares of land.
Arkady Zlochevsky, head of the Russian Grain Union, a powerful grain lobby, believes that delays in GMO production are a result of aggressive media campaigns which have instilled in many Russians a negative attitude to transgenic products.
"What should one expect, when all media are full of stories about Frankenstein food? I personally defend labelling GMO food as I prefer buying these Frankenstein foods, which have advantages over ordinary food," he told Reuters.
In Russia all packaged products containing more than 0.9 percent of GMOs are required to have special labels, although GMO opponents have said these rule are not always observed.
Zlochevsky believes that Russia will eventually adopt GMO technology.
"It is just a question of time. The agricultural sector is very conservative, and revolutions in it are very rare. When the previous one happened with the advent of tractors, peasants met them with pitchforks."