Genetically engineered soybean cultivation in Romania: Out of control

11 January 2006

1 Executive Summary On 1st January 2007, Romania expects to join the European Union. However conflicts of approach over genetically engineered (GE), also called genetically modified (GM) crops may overshadow smooth accession. Romania is the “El Dorado” for GM crops and the GE industry in Europe. It is the only country in Europe allowing commercial growing of GE Soya, the Roundup Ready (RR) GE Soya produced by the U.S. companies, Monsanto and Pioneer. The Romanian legislation on GMOs is very weak and far away from implementing all existing EU-standards. The responsible authorities have no means to implement the existing laws, as there are no inspectors to make controls, and not a single certified laboratory to do scientific analysis. Romania has the largest area of land cultivated with GE crops in Europe. 136,380 hectares of Soya was planted in 2005, out of which only 85,000 ha is officially registered to be GE Soya. However, according to farmers’ associations and even the ex-country manager of Monsanto in Romania and Limagrain, in reality the GE Soya is up to 90% of the total surface cultivated with soya varieties - and nobody in Romania has control of the situation. In August 2005, Greenpeace did research on the illegal planting of GE Soya in Romania and the results proved that Romania is being invaded by GMOs without any control. With scientific PCR analysis done at Umweltbundesamt , Vienna, Austria, as accredited laboratory to analyze GMOs according to the international standards it was proven that indeed unrecorded cultivation and contamination with GE soya is happening all over Romania. There are registers with declarations from farmers growing GE Soya at county level and centralized at the Ministry of Agriculture, but nobody is controlling them. The findings of unrecorded fields of GE Soya follow previous Greenpeace discoveries of illegal growing of GE insect resistant potatoes at the Research and Development Centre for Potatoes in Tîrgu-Secuiesc . Illegal experiments with GE plum trees have also been found at the Research Station for Trees in Bistrita ...