Ukraine has Decree on GM restrictions. But it’s only on paper.

So far there have been no legal restrictions in Ukraine for selling of  products that have  0,9 % of GM substances  in them. But Ukrainian government issued Decree on August 1st  this year about obligatory condition of marking any product with such GM elements. That Decree has been delayed by Ukrainian government decision.

 

If you go to any market, shop centre in Ukraine, you can't see anywhere special marking on the product packing, showing the GM maintenance. We, Ukrainians, aren't used  to recognising and paying attention to such markings.

 

Many Ukrainian people know about this problem – danger of GM issues for human organism from media sources, but only some of us realised that we are so close to it in our country. Majority consider that GM problem are not ours. Allegedly, it's foreign priority.

 

Recently Ukrainian government declared its intention to cancel the previous Decree on obligatory marking of any products that contain 0,9 percents of GM elements. State official Alexander Shnipko declared it. According to his words, special group of people responsible for considerations of executing Ukraine's requests for entering to WTO demanded such condition. He said that the US insisted on cancellation of this Decree as the serious obstacle on Ukrainian way to WTO.

 

Prior to Ukrainian other structure "Gospotrebstandard", responsible for controlling the standards in any food industry, declared that it suggested Ukrainian government ( KABMIN) to delay the realisation of the mentioned Decree until elaboration of all necessary legal document, regulating the mechanism of the marking GM elements in products. It suggested to put that Decree on practise starting from December 1st this year.

 

"Gospotrebstandard" notices that such Decree is very important for Ukraine, because Ukrainian citizens, according to article 50 of Constitution, must have access to information about the quality of the products. That's why they proposed some of the governmental structures, including the Ministry of health, Ministry of environment  and others, to work on proposals  for implementing this Decree in the end of 2007. Those proposals will be passed to Kabmin.

 

"Gospotrebstandard" was proposed to Ukrainian product producers to put the marking on their food production about absence of GM elements. Allegedly, it would be done  for advertisement of Ukrainian healthy  food production, in their favour.