ARMINFO News Agency, Armenia
November 9, 2017 Thursday


Head of the State Food Security Service of Armenia considers it
inappropriate to implement GMO products on the territory of the
Republic

November 09

Yerevan

Naira Badalyan. The head of the State Food Security Service of the
Ministry of Agriculture of Armenia, Ishkhan Karapetyan, considers it
unreasonable to sell GMO products on the territory of the republic.
"I, as a citizen, do not want to eat food that contains GMOs," he told
journalists on November 9 after a government meeting.

The head of the department recalled that around the genetically
modified organisms in science have long been various discussions. At
the same time, within the framework of its powers, the State Service
is currently carrying out appropriate actions and studying the process
of import and turnover of these products. "Now the volume of seeds
imported by Monsanto does not exceed 1% of total imports, I do not
think that this, at the moment, contains big risks," Karapetyan said.

Next year, the food safety state service planned large-scale
monitoring programs to detect the presence of pesticides, nitrates and
GMOs in plant products. "After summing up the monitoring results, we
will get the full picture, which will allow us to assess the part of
the control," he said. At the same time, according to the official,
according to the imperative of the Armenian legislation, there must be
a marking on the products indicating the presence of GMOs. The same
principle is followed by the technical regulations of the Customs
Union, where the permissible threshold of GMO content in food is set
at 0.9%. In turn, as the Minister of Agriculture of Armenia Ignaty
Arakelyan noted, at present the agency is studying the activities of
the company Monsanto, which has been registered and functioning in the
country for 20 years. "Today we are studying possible risks from the
company's activities, also in terms of environmental protection," the
minister said. It is noteworthy that, as Arakelyan pointed out in
response to the question of ArmInfo, as early as 2013, the Ministry of
Nature Protection acted with the legislative initiative on GMO
products in Armenia, but for some unknown reasons the process was
suspended. "We plan to return to the legislative initiative and
understand how relevant it is today, and whether there is a need for
it," he said.

At the same time, the head of the Ministry of Agriculture sees the
danger that the use of GMO seeds will spoil the soil and will
jeopardize the development of organic farming in Armenia. "The danger
exists always, we need to understand how true this is, what is being
said today, what are the risks," concluded the head of the Ministry of
Agriculture of Armenia.

Note that on November 1, the efforts of the US Embassy in Armenia in
Yerevan hosted a presentation of the activities of Valmont and
Monsanto. Both companies are well known in the world market: the
former is engaged in the sale and maintenance of mechanized irrigation
equipment, and there are no complaints about it. The same can not be
said about the transnational corporation Monsanto - this company is
engaged in the production of transgenic seeds and poisons for their
processing. And then the charge d'affaires of the US Embassy in
Armenia Rafik Mansur marked the entry into the Armenian market of a
whole presentation. In an interview with reporters, Alexander
Zvyagintsev, Sales Manager for Monsanto in the CIS, assured that the
company will not offer Armenian partners to work with genetically
modified products, since they "do not do this in countries where it is
prohibited." But for about 20 years now, the company has been selling
seeds in Armenia and advising farmers. In turn, the US Embassy in
Armenia reported that Monsanto has been selling its products on the
Armenian market since 2006. Speaking about the objectives of the
presentation of the Monsanto and Valmont companies (the sale of
irrigation equipment) in Armenia, the US Embassy explained that the
event was held in the context of US policy to stimulate US investments
in the Armenian economy. The topic of a possible entry into the
Armenian market of the American GMO giant was not left indifferent by
the soloist of the rock band System of a Down, Serge Tankian, who, in
his Facebook page, called on Armenia to "stay away" from the American
company Monsanto. In particular, he wrote: "Because of its policy,
Monsanto has earned a reputation in the United States and Europe for
a" corporation of evil. "Unlike in the United States, in Armenia, I
have the opportunity to enjoy the taste of organic, crunchy apples - a
product of long-term agricultural work. then it will be like this.
"Thanks to Monsanto, I can not find such apples in the US," Tankian
writes. In the end of September, The Guardian published an unmasking
article that Monsanto officially spent about 300,000 - 400 on lobbying
for its interests in the European Parliament 000 euros per year, and
internal correspondence was also made public where the company's
employees discuss ways to better prevent the normal study of the
glyphosate pesticide and its recognition as dangerous, and correspond
with some US officials and scientists about it. that the European
organization EFSA, responsible for product safety, copied its 2015
report on glyphosate from the Monsanto 2012 authorship report.