China vows to step up GM food research, stop imports from flooding market
Top policymaker insists imports should not be allowed to dominate local market and calls for more public education on 'sensitive issue'
China yesterday vowed to spearhead research into genetically modified food, with its top agricultural policymaker insisting that imports should not dominate the domestic market.
But one green group said the public should have a bigger say in monitoring developments in the technology.
Han Jun , deputy director of the Office of the Rural Work Leading Group under the Communist Party's Central Committee, said that even though China still trailed developed countries in research into GM organisms - the source of GM foods - it had international-standard safety measures in place and led the world in the study of GM rice and corn.
"As a big country, one thing for sure is that China can't let its market for genetically modified organisms be occupied solely by foreign products," Han said yesterday, two days after the party and the central government released the country's policy blueprint for the year.
In the blueprint, the so-called No1 Central Document, the authorities ordered that GMO research be improved and the public better educated about the products.
Expanding on the document, Han said yesterday that GM food was a sensitive social issue and the authorities had to investigate how GM food management in China compared with that overseas .
But he stressed that all GM food activity in China, from experimentation to imports, was in line with the law.