Only Three Countries Have Completely Banned GMOs

Large chemical companies hanging on to International secretive Trade Agreements to impose their will on sovereign nation-States.

Despite massive opposition to GMOs worldwide, only three countries have truly said NO to GMO.

According to the Center for Food Safety, only Zambia, Benin and Serbia have official bans on genetically engineered food imports and cultivation.

A CFS report also shows that only a handful of countries have mandatory labeling of nearly all GMO foods. However, that mandatory labeling still leaves room for small amounts of genetically engineered contamination to take place.

In countries like Greenland, Russia, Kazakhstan, Italy, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Portugal and most of western Europe, GMO contamination is still tolerated at thresholds of between 0.9 and 1 percent.

A smaller number of countries that only includes Brazil, China, Ukraine, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, South Africa and Kenya, mandate the labeling of many GMO products, but allow a higher threshold of genetically engineered contamination. GMO traces can be present at rates higher than 1% without a defined maximum level of transgenic pollution.

Some countries in this category have laws that allow the contamination of at least 1 % of GMO material for the entire food item.

The next group includes countries that have mandatory labeling of only some food items but whose laws allow numerous exceptions while having no defined threshold. The countries in this group include India, Thailand, Vietnam, Tunisia, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Bolivia, Peru and Mali.

The countries above are also known for having vague implementation of mandatory GMO labeling as there are no provisions for enforcement of the policies that governments have created.

A great majority of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America still have not established laws that regulate the cultivation or import of GMO products. This group includes Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Argentina, Costa Rica, The United States, Canada, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Cuba, Jamaica and many more.

In addition to not having established their own laws for cultivation and import of GMO products, the countries above follow American food standards, whose scientific base is dictated by large chemical corporations like Monsanto, Cargill, Dow Chemical, Syngenta and others.

The last group of countries does not even have a law that regulates the labeling of products with GMO ingredients, which makes it impossible for consumers to know what exactly they are eating. In fact, in most of the countries in this group, people have been eating genetically engineered foods for decades.

Except for the three countries cited at the beginning, all other nations are contaminated not only by GMO products, but also by large quantities of pesticides and herbicides used to support the plantation of GMO seeds all over their lands.

Most of the chemicals used in agriculture contain glyphosate, a product of Monsanto’s chemical laboratories that the World Health Organization has linked to cancer.

Large chemical companies hanging on to International Trade Agreements

Given the latest surge in opposition to GMO products and lack of labeling, the large chemical conglomerates have opted for imposing their rules through international trade agreements that have been negotiated and approved in secret.

Small victories at the local and regional levels have forced Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta and other chemical companies to write and mandate new rules when it comes to the plantation and labeling of GMOs.

The latest attempt to violate national sovereignty is the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and similar initiatives that are being sent to congresses around Europe and North America to change the way GMOs are treated at the national level.

Legislators who are on the side of the chemical companies are not only trying to pass legislation that grant a free pass to those companies, but also intend to give the TPP a fast track approval. Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States, and Vietnam are some of the countries pushing the hardest in favor of banning any kind of restriction on GMOs.

The passage of this trade agreement will immediately impact between 800 million and 1.5 billion people, whose representatives have not only not read the contents of the proposal, but also refuse to hear the citizens in their rejection of GMOs.

The approval or rejection of the TPP and similar legislation in Europe and Asia will be perhaps the most important battle in the fight for food safety. It is very likely that the result of the negotiations will drive the policies of the majority of countries that are yet to craft GMO legislation and whose governments are very likely to accept TPP rules on GMOs and other trade policies.

Luis R. Miranda is an award-winning journalist and the founder and editor-in-chief at The Real Agenda. His career spans over 18 years and almost every form of news media. His articles include subjects such as environmentalism, Agenda 21, climate change, geopolitics, globalisation, health, vaccines, food safety, corporate control of governments, immigration and banking cartels, among others. Luis has worked as a news reporter, on-air personality for Live and Live-to-tape news programs. He has also worked as a script writer, producer and co-producer on broadcast news. Read more about Luis.