VietNamNet
Bridge – Vietnamese state management
agencies have admitted that genetically modified products have been present in
Vietnam for a long time. Especially, they have been available everywhere in the
market, competing with normal censored products.
In
April 2012, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) informed
that there had been no final experiment result about genetically modified
organism (GMO), and that Vietnam still does not allow growing genetically
modified crops (GMC) in Vietnam.
Most of
the Vietnamese polled people said they had never seen any GM products before.
Nevertheless, management agencies have confirmed that GM products have been
present in Vietnam for a long time.
Management agencies powerless
Though
Vietnam only allows growing GMC in small scale before making a decision over
whether to grow GMC in a large scale in Vietnam, GMO products have been
available on the market for the last many years.
Professor
Nguyen Lan Hung said at a recent conference that ¾ of GMO cotton varieties have
appeared in Vietnam. In Son La province, farmers have been using GM cotton
varieties imported from China and they have been satisfactory about the new
variety which can bring higher yield than domestic variety.
Hung
said that the area for growing the GM cotton variety would increase from 1000
hectares to 3000-4000 hectares the next year, because the new variety can bring
higher yield, while the trees are well drought and insect resistant.
GM food
has also been present in Vietnam for a long time. According to Dr Nguyen Lan
Dung, Secretary General of the Vietnam Biology Association, said that Vietnam
has been using GMO products, no matter if it wants or not. Every year, Vietnam
imports 2 million tons of soybean cake and 1.6 million tons of maize, mostly GM
maize.
Meanwhile,
the scientists, who attended the workshop on GMO in early October 2011,
affirmed that most of the cotton trees grown in Vietnam are GMC.
The
Testing and Standard Center No. 3, which tested 323 samples of soybean, tomato,
potato, maize and rice taken accidentally from 17 markets and supermarkets in
HCM City, found out that 1/3 of them are GMO products. However, the testing
center now does not carry out GMO experiments any more.
Consumers
being cheated
Answering
the question “do you know GMO products?, Nguyen Thu Thuy in Go Vap district in
HCM City said she heard about this, but she does not understand the issue well.
Some people say GMO have appeared in HCM City, but no one has seen any GMO
products in city so far.
Thuy
also thinks that if the products are GMO, this information must be shown on the
packs of the products, while consumers would decide whether to buy them.
Meanwhile,
Kim Minh, chief accountant of a bank branch in HCM City, said she usually
updates information about GMO and she knows that this remains a controversial
issue.
However,
Minh said that while the management agencies have not come to a final
conclusion, the availability of GMO products on the market means that
manufacturers do not respect domestic consumers.
A
scientist has cited the survey by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural
Development as saying that most of the animal feed samples available on the
market contain GMO factors. To date, three kinds of GM plants have been allowed
to grow in Vietnam. GM maize has been grown together with normal maize in HCM
City, Dong Nai and Binh Duong.
The
worrying problem is that foreign companies give varieties to farmers directly
and they promise to take responsibility for the outlet of the products. Farmers
in the central region and central highlands have also been growing cotton in a
spontaneous way, which shows that agencies remain weak in managing GMO
products.
Hai
Duong
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