“The Ministry of Agriculture is working on a feed protein programme aimed at replacing the need to import GMO animal feeds”, Minister of Agriculture Sándor Fazekas announced on M1 Hungarian television and Kossuth Radio’s “180 Minutes” program this morning. “The majority of consumers in Hungary reject GMO foods, and accordingly our goal is to ensure that animal feeds are also 100 percent GMO-free within the near future”, he explained.
“Keeping Hungary GMO free is a constitutional and national interest. Genetically modified plants cannot be included in public cultivation in Hungary, but for the moment a significant proportion of the proteins used for animal feeds is still imported GMO soy”, the Minister said, adding that the feed protein programme under development by the Ministry is aimed at substituting this.
“Our efforts so far have achieved major success; the area of land used for cultivating soy in Hungary has increased significantly. Thanks to the subsidies associated with production, GMO-free soy is currently being grown on 70 thousand hectares of farmland, compared to the previous 40-45 thousand hectares. Thanks to last year’s record yield of 3 tons per hectare, the production quantity for 2016 was 181 thousand tons, some one third of domestic requirements. This means that the country needs to import 370-400 tons of GMO-free soy-a-year”, Mr. Fazekas said.
The Minister explained that over the upcoming years the programme to replace GMO soy will involve increasing the domestic production of soy and other alternative protein crops, as well as the increased use of the by-products of biofuel production. Soy can also be replaced by other feeds to a certain extent, including perennial leguminou