Georgia

2007.09.06 GMOs in Georgia Georgia is currently elaborating a National Biosafety Legislation. A draft has been presented to the public in September and it is now being publicly debated. At the moment there is no regulation in place for GMOs introduction and distribution. Friends of the Earth-Georgia together with other NGOs ares very actively involved in this process and are advocating the idea of declaring the country GM-Free. The Greens Movement of Georgia / Friends of the Earth-Georgia was the initiator of discussions regarding this issue. As a result the coalition of interested NGOs was formed that also includes biofarming associations and several biofarmers. The coalition is trying to lead the process of law-drafting towards declaring Georgia GMO-Free. The arguments for this are that Georgia is such a small country that it is impossible to grow GMO and non-GMO crops side by side without contamination. Besides, Georgia can not produce huge amounts of agricultural products, thus it should be focused on the production of high quality products.

Friends of the Earth-Georgia is conducting several activities to create basis for GMO-Free country.
These include:
- research on seed import in Georgia
- survey of food producers (black-white listing)
- awareness raising of farmers and food producers, as well as local governments
- legislative activities

In December 2004 participants of the first Caucasian Regional Biosafety Conference organized by the Greens Movement of Georgia, decided to create GM-Free Caucasus Network. Later, after the similar meeting in Central Asia, the network was enlarged and in collaboration with CIS Alliance on Biosafety covers the whole former Soviet Union space. The network consists of NGOs from Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Russia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Main demand of the network from the Governments of mentioned countries is to introduce 5-year moratorium on import and cultivation of GMOs and to create necessary legislative basis for declaring the regions of these countries and/or whole countries GM-Free.

(Eremurus Club and Biosafety Campaign of the International Socio-Ecological Union)