MOSCOW, February 03. /ITAR-TASS/. The State Duma, lower house of Russia’s parliament, will hold a round-table session devoted to the use of genetically modified organisms (GMO) in foodstuffs, deputy chairman of the Duma Committee for Agrarian Issues Nadezhda Shkolkina said on Monday.
The committee believes that it is necessary to point to the GMO presence in capital letters, Shkolkina said.
Earlier, the Izvestia daily wrote that Yvgeny Fyodorov and the Russian Sovereignty inter-factional group called for toughening requirements for GMO foods in Russia and banning their production in the country.
“The State Duma will hold a round table meeting on this issue in February or March. It will involve representatives of ministries, agencies, producers and experts,” the lawmaker said.
“I’m a mother and I’m against GMO,” she said, adding “Being a deputy I heard different points of view. For example, experts name such aspect as competition: by using GMO the United States’ yielding capacity reaches 60-65 hundreds kilos per hectare.”
“In any case I think that a purchaser must know what he buys: GMO should be spelled out in capital letters,” she said.
Last week the committee’s chairman, Nikolai Pankov, said, “It is premature to allow GMO to enter the Russian market without convincing research because they can harm a human being’s health.”
The lawmaker called for creating conditions for Russian agrarians to produce safe foods and develop ecological and organic farming. “These are our additional advantages while Russian products are exported to the world market,” he added.