Past ANPED ActivityThis introduction is based on the article 'The Modified East', by ANPED's Genetic Engineering campaigner Iza Kruszewska for The Ecologist and was published in September 2000.Science and technology have a long history in Central and Eastern Europe and the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union. Indeed the grandfather of genetics is Mendel, a monk who lived in Brno, now in the Czech Republic. Already in the 1980s, scientists in many of these countries were undertaking experiments in agri-biotechnology, and by the early 1990s were releasing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into the environment without any regulatory controls. Since 1991, Bulgarian scientists from the Institute of Genetic Engineering in Kostinbrod, have been releasing GM tobacco plants during field trials. In 1996, in Poland, Greenpeace discovered GM carp with human growth hormone genes (to make them grow faster) that had been swimming in the ponds of a government institute since at least 1994! At this time, most of the biotech research was still domestically-driven and funded by the public purse.
Now, in the face of strong opposition to GM foods in Western Europe and increasingly elsewhere, the transnational 'life sciences' companies, such as Monsanto and Pioneer are choosing Eastern Europe and the EECCA as a playground for their genetic experiments. Where better to exploit a culture of secrecy and oppression than in a region where decades of authoritarian rule has created a society afraid to assert their democratic rights to information and participation. These may be nominally democratic countries, but State officials there are still regarded with fear, rather than as public servants. The transnationals know that their activities are safe from public scrutiny and legal challenge. Many countries in the region still have no specific GM laws, and even in those that have laws, they are either weak or non enforced.
First-round EU accession countries, such as Hungary, Czech Republic and Poland, and those torn by war in the former Yugoslavia, like Croatia, have been spared some of the worst corporate excesses. Yet second-round countries, like Bulgaria, and certainly the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union, offer the best chances for TNCs to push their GM seeds. It is clear that companies want some legal basis for starting field trials of GM plants, because these are the first steps to commercialisation. In 1996, when Bulgaria became the first country in the region to introduce minimal regulations providing for an approval system for GM seeds, this was the cue for Monsanto to introduce GM seeds.
Information held by officials in most of these countries is closely guarded. They prefer to bend to the wishes of industry who demand that information on field trials be confidential, despite the fact that these same companies accept extensive lists of their field trials in Western Europe being publicly available on the web. Some information about field trials then may not even reach officials, since few countries require the maintenance of a publicly-accessible central database of all GMO releases. Information on the presence of GM food on the market is likewise non-existent. According to a Polish environmental ministry official: "Strictly for ethical reasons, producers should label products which contain GMOs....companies are the ones that have the problem [in enforcing Polish GM labelling law], not the Polish Trade Inspection Service".
Elsewhere, the situation in Ukraine and Georgia, and in particular the activities of Monsanto, have been documented by Greenpeace. In Hungary and the Czech Republic, NGO campaigns provide a picture of the situation.
However, large parts of this region, including Russia, remain largely uncharted by NGOs, although campaigns are starting to emerge. And these are urgently needed. UNIDO's database of GMO releases in Russia reveals that AgrEvo's herbicide-tolerant sugar beet and Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybeans are already grown commercially.
Information on Countries:
Bulgaria /
Croatia /
Czech Republic /
Georgia /
Hungary /
Poland /
Romania (UPDATED) /
Russia /
Slovenia /
Ukraine /
Yugoslavia (briefing from April 2002)EU Accession
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