To comply with a new law, supermarkets have started labeling food products to certify that the contents contain no genetically modified organisms.
But critics say that, given the woeful state of government inspection, the labels are unreliable or even useless guides for consumers worried about what is in the food they are eating.
The debate over genetically modified ingredients – plants or animals that have had their DNA changed to enhance certain traits – is intensifying. No one is certain whether these foods are safe or pose serious long-term health and environmental risks.
Some health and environmental experts warn that such modified food could provoke allergic reactions or make people less responsive to antibiotic medicines over time. Consequently, growth in organic food production has accompanied the rise of genetically modified food. Definitions vary, but food is generally considered organic if it was grown without synthetic chemicals or, in the case of animals, is free of hormones or antibiotics.
Advocates of genetically modified agriculture say their methods provide safe and effective ways to increase food production to meet the ever-growing demands of a hungry world. The global population is expected to grow from 6.1 billion in 2000 to 9.2 billion in the next 30 years.
Genetically modified crops are officially grown on 134 million hectares in the world, mostly in the United States, Brazil, Argentina, India and China. The use of these technologies is steadily increasing by 9 million hectares per year.
The new labels are a requirement under a law that came into effect on March 9. But despite the good intentions, the labels are not particularly trustworthy, and make little sense in Ukraine, where no genetically modified organisms are officially grown.
Producers raced to affix the labels or face fines of Hr 170-Hr 850. Fines for retailers are even steeper – up to 50 percent of the cost of foodstuffs without the proper marking.
“We’ve already spent Hr 150,000 on ‘Without GMO’ stickers, which obviously came out of the pockets of the consumers,” said Henadiy Yurchenko, director of corporate relations at Nestle food company in Ukraine. He said that Nestle has never used genetically modified ingredients in their products in Ukraine.
But those companies who use such ingredients would be violating Ukrainian law – and labels would only call attention to this infraction.
“There isn’t a single genetically modified organism registered in Ukraine. Therefore none of the genetically modified ingredients used in food that is sold in Ukraine can be legal. This norm is stipulated in the law on biological security adopted in Ukraine in 2007,” said Mykola Prodanchuk, director of the Medved’s Institute of Ecohygiene and Toxocilogy.
And, anyway, the requirement can be easily evaded in Ukraine because of lax government control and the absurdity of the legislation. For example, to be able to check the production facility and the food it churns out, specialized government agencies have to give a 10-day notice to the producer – enough time to fix whatever is wrong.
In December 2009, Poltava standartmetrologia – the government agency that certifies and controls the food standards – conducted a spot check of prepared frozen meat products, such as pelmeni. It turned out that 70 percent of these products contained genetically modified soya, while the label indicated they were “Without GMO.” But because the agency did not give proper warning, its agents could not enforce the provision.
“As our inspections were self-initiated and the producers were not warned about the inspections 10 days ahead, the findings don’t have any legal force,” said Viktor Myronko, head of Poltavastandartmetrologia. “We need to get rid of this regulation where the producers receive a 10-day notice before the inspection in order to learn the truth about the food.”
Another government consumer protection agency in Kyiv, Derzhspozhyvstandart, said it found genetically modified ingredients in 5 percent of the tested samples in 2009-2010. But these tests remain sporadic as the government has enough money only for limited inspections.
In the end, experts said, Ukraine’s government still has no coherent strategy. The new labeling law came into force more than a decade after genetically modified crops started to be grown commercially in the world in 1996.
“I’m convinced that the government doesn’t have any strategy on genetically modified organisms in Ukraine,” said Tetyana Tymochko, first deputy head of the Ukrainian Ecological League. “This fact is as dangerous as not having a strategy for economic and social development while unsystematic legislative processes leave Ukrainians unprotected.”
As a result, illegal and unmonitored genetically modified crops have spread throughout Ukraine and these ingredients have made their way into the food people eat.
Some experts say that roughly one million hectares of Ukrainian land is sown with transgenic seeds. More than 50 percent of that is soya, 20 percent is maize, and the rest is potatoes and beet roots.
The stronghold of such agriculture is in the Kherson region in southern Ukraine. However, a representative for the international agricultural giant Monsanto denied trading in genetically modified seeds in Ukraine.
Monsanto recently attempted to officially register a genetically modified variant of soya, but did not succeed because of lack of documentation and scientific research.
“Registering genetically modified variants under a company means that the company assumes responsibility for their product. So, for example, if in 20 years somebody goes bald and the cause is proven to be a genetically modified product, the company under which it was registered is legally responsible for the consequences,” said Prodanchuk, the director of the Medved’s Institute of Ecohygiene and Toxicology.
Kyiv Post staff writer Kateryna Grushenko can be reached at [email protected].
About genetically modified organisms
More than two dozen countries grow genetically modified crops, with the area under cultivation totalling 134 million hectares, an 80-fold increase from 1996 with an annual growth rate of 9 million hectares.
More than three-quarters of the soybeans grown around the world are now genetically modified, as is roughly half the cotton and over a quarter of the maize.
There are 280 registered genetically modified plants in the world.
The new biotech maize, SmartStax™, will be released in the United States.
The genetically modified seed market was worth $10.5 billion in 2009 and the crops that grew from that seed were worth more than $130 billion.
Monsanto, a U.S.-based multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation, sells 90 percent of the world’s genetically engineered seeds.
Source: International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, a non-profit organization.
