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| Image: http://www.myfalseworld.org |
If you have ever wondered just how far up the political food chain the GMO industrialists throw their bloated weight, you can look to the World Trade Organization (WTO). It is here that regulations which define membership with the WTO will now force Russia to import genetically modified organisms (GMO)
Russia has been trying to become a part of the WTO for 18 years with multiple heated negotiations, but you can bet they weren’t prepared for the small print in the WTOs member documents. What’s worse is that, in line with WTO regulations, Russia will have to enable producers of GMO to sell and label the product as any other – without a specific GMO label, which states that the product contains genetically modified ingredients.
Activists and environmentalists are practically choleric about this new development. Anti-GMO rallies are at an all time high in the country with the release of this news. Not unlike the country of Bhutan – many would like to make Russia a GMO-free zone. Activists plan to present President Vladimir Putin with over a million signatures requesting a non-GMO country. In recent planned demonstrations Moscow authorities would only allow people to picket, but not formally march to protest the WTO’s GMO poison being politically asserted into their food supply.
The director of the National Association for Genetic Safety (NAGS), Yelena Sharoikina, says,
“People should be allowed to choose what products they can buy. We believe it is necessary to label products that contain GMO accordingly . . . We want to take every possible precaution. The experiments on hamsters, for example, are particularly troubling. Animals that have been fed with genetically modified foods stop reproducing after the second generation. Of course, you can’t directly apply these results to humans, but it’s definitely food for thought.”
Russia would not be the first GMO-free territory in the world. There are currently over 150 territories in that illustrious position. According to FIRAB (the European Network of GMO-Free Regions), “the regions of Tuscany and Upper Austria were the first to identify the possibility of an initiative originating from the local context, launching a political platform for allowing European regions the choice to keep their territories GMO-free, implementing the precautionary principle and keeping in line with their own peculiar economic and environmental features. These regions had in fact already developed a distinct sensitivity on the issue which had materialized in regional regulations that excluded transgenic crop cultivation.” Switzerland, Serbia, and Bulgaria also have GMO-free zones.
Organic farmers in Russia are desperately trying to keep their lands GMO free. For now, most buyers of organic produce in Russia tend to be middle income families, but awareness of GMO damage is growing. If the WTO forces Russia to import and sell GM seed, it will make it very difficult for marginalized families to have a choice about what kind of food to buy at all, and farmers will progressively be indebted to companies like Monsanto and BASF, to such a degree that mass farmer suicides will become the norm in yet another country.
If you would like to add your name to those which will be put before President Vladimir Putin, a leader who has been known to fight the Rothschild's banking schemes, and may actually care about protecting Russia from GMO, you can send a letter to the Kremlin, here.
Sources: Real Farmacy
Nation of Change
