Ukraine may amend its legislation on the establishment of a mechanism for circulation and control of GM products. As head of the State Inspectorate for Agriculture of Ukraine Vladyslav Honcharenko said recently, the country had to establish clear control over the cultivation, storage, transportation and use of GM crops, and to prescribe the level of liability for breach of the relevant legislation and the recycling mechanism for unregistered GMO products. “This control will only be possible if enshrined in a law, so we need to draft appropriate amendments to existing legislation that will establish the precise mechanism of circulation of GMOs from soil in which their seeds are sown to using finished produce,” he explained. The official added that the changes should include the establishment of appropriate buffer zones for the cultivation of such produce and separate storage facilities as well as identify safe ways of exporting it. In addition, the authorities should consider creating the national register of GM products and introducing declaring process to let the public know the purpose of cultivation, locations and subsequent use. According to him, the government will set up a working group to draft the legislative amendments. The preliminary results of its work were to be reviewed before February 23.
“The problem is we have not worked out registration procedures for such produce, since Ukraine has effectively banned producing it. The ban may be lifted sometime, though. Therefore, the inspectorate’s proposals are a step to prevent possible problems from arising if the state allows registration. Now is the time to develop rules for this market,” director general of the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club Association Volodymyr Lapa maintained.
Therefore, similarly to the law on organic produce, the government set about developing tracking mechanism for GM products starting with production and ending with every store counter.
According to experts, the issue of GM products should be addressed urgently. Chairperson of the Agrarian Union of Ukraine Hennadii Novikov said that despite the ban, they were still being produced. GM seeds were most popular with soybeans and corn growers. According to the agricultural market participants, about a third of corn and 70 percent soybeans in Ukraine are suspect.
President of the Association of Ukrainian Producers and Processors of Soybeans Viktor Tymchenko added that a control mechanism had to be developed with the view at minimizing farmers’ losses now that spring field work season was approaching.
In addition, Novikov continued, it should be endorsed by industry associations, lest it turned out that a single laboratory will control everything. Besides, he said, the authorities should decide whether to control exported crops if importing country had no GM requirements. Novikov said that European countries were buying soybeans for animal feed without asking about their GM status.
“We initiated the issue of granting partial permission for cultivation of industrial crops (soybeans from GM seeds), as is the case in Russia and the EU,” the minister of agriculture and industry of Ukraine Mykola Prysiazhniuk shared his plans in October 2013. He did not discard the possibility that soybeans might be followed by corn in receiving permission for using GM seeds.
Meanwhile, chairperson of the All-Ukrainian Ecological League Tetiana Tymochko stressed that Ukraine was among the few countries to be associated with the cultivation of environmentally friendly GM-free agricultural products. “It is in the national interests of Ukraine to grow organic produce, which is in greatest demand globally,’ she said.
Global GM crops acreage increased by 6 percent to 170.3 million hectares in 2012, representing 13 percent of all arable land. The US, Brazil, and Argentina top the list in terms of acreage, while prevalence of GM crops is highest in China, India, Brazil, Argentina, and South Africa. Last year, Cuba and South Sudan became the latest additions to the list of countries allowing GM crops cultivation. Meanwhile, three countries which used to cultivate them (Sweden, Germany, and Poland) are no longer doing so. At the moment, only five European countries – Spain, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, and Portugal – grow GM crops.
