Armenia: Concerns over genetically modified food rise as harvest season nears

Unusual flavors in fruits and vegetables have been of increasing concern to Armenian consumers over the past years.

The issue is also a hot topic on Facebook, with many netizens insisting that it is due to a genetically modified organisms (GMO) injected into harvest (such as fish gene into cucumber seeds etc).

The problem appears to be of little or no concern to the Ministry of Agriculture which practically rules out the possibility of GMOs’ import to Armenia. “We do not posses any data on the import of seeds containing GMOs and do not even think that anything of the kind can possibly happen in Armenia. The seeds permitted [for sale] are registered, so nobody can legally import to Armenia seeds containing genetically modified organisms,” says Garnik Petrosyan, a deputy minister. 

Consumer NGOs, however, insist on the opposite. Speaking to Tert.am, Babken Pipoyan, President of the local NGO “Informed and Protected Consumer:, said he knows that Armenia had earlier imported those seeds, which now yield fruit.

“It is not just a gossip but fact,” he told our correspondent. “It was even announced at the National Assembly debates devoted to GMOs and was documented on a state level.”

Asked to comment on the consumers’ complaints about fish smells from tomato and cucumber, Pipoyan said he could not make any guesses and recommended instead conducting instead laboratory tests to find out the causes.

He proposed concentrating more on the domestically processed agricultural produce.

“We have GMO imports within our limits. But for a clear picture, we need a monitoring project which we do not practically have; hence there isn’t that full picture,” he said, adding that the absence of a properly oversight allows the consumer no choice but to rely on the importer’s honesty.

The effective legislation in Armenia allows the sale of genetically modified food whenever the products have a corresponding labeling  (above 0.9%). There is a ban only for special-purpose food, such as nutrition for kids.

According to Vahe Danielyan, Head of the Agriculture Ministry’s Food Security and Quality Assurance Department, the presence of GMOs in food products is not a food safety threat.
He says that the tests conducted periodically have not revealed any GMOs in the imported products.

Citing Green Peace records, the local website Organicfood.am reported earlier that many well-known companies use GMOs in such products as children’s food, coffee, chocolate and confectionary.

Asked to comment on the finding, Danielyan said he isn’t aware of any monitoring results indicating the presence of GMOs in the food products imported to Armenia. “These are just websites whose campaign is targeted against GMOs. Suppose anyone declares that domestically manufactured products contain is genetically modified, are we supposed to take that for granted?” he added.

Danielyan said he doesn’t find the allegations about GMOs’ destructive effects definitively true, adding that opinions over the issue are now widely split among the world scientists (with the opponents saying GMOs are carcinogenic and the proponents insisting on their use in medications, such as insulin).

As of 2000, over 50% of bakery products are genetically modified in the United States. The country also allows the use of GMOs in medicine (no corresponding labeling is required in the US and Canadae).

In the European Union, thse organisms’ meat and milk’s use in food is permissible; it is however banned in scores of other countries (including Austria, Greek, Poland, Switzerland, Venezuela, Algeria, Thailand, Benin, as well as Spain, Australia and several states of New Zealand).