After the new regulation went into effect on Oct. 26 following its publication in the Official Gazette, the ministry informed the governor’s offices of all 81 provinces about the regulation. In accordance with the ministry directive, teams from the Edirne Provincial Agriculture Directorate launched inspections at the Kapıkule border gate.While they used to investigate the products’ compliance with the Turkish Standards Institute (TSE) before the legislation on GMOs, for the next two weeks they will be taking samples from products such as potato, corn, canola, rice, tomato, sugar cane and lettuce to determine if they contain GMOs. The teams have so far sent 12 samples from products imported from Bulgaria for analysis. The test results of one sample came back negative, but the rest are still being processed.
The new regulation drew widespread opposition from agricultural organizations, consumer associations and political opposition parties, all of whom claimed that the regulation places the nation’s health at risk by making the import of GMO crops in Turkey free.
However, Agriculture Minister Mehdi Eker, the figure at the center of criticism, dismissed allegations that the new regulation would open the way to the entry of GMOs to Turkey, explaining that the GMO trade will be supervised and that they will not escape supervision, as they had in the past, with this regulation. He also described ongoing debates about the issue as an attempt to misinform the public.
GMOs can be produced by gene cloning methods in which a non-native gene is introduced and expressed in a new organism.
