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

ArmInfo.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.