Assessment of the effects of biosafety law in Turkey

Nowadays, legislative regulations enacted on biosafety issues together with increased usage of transgenic crops have gained huge importance. Great steps on biosafety are taken in the international area considering human and environmental health. Every country has consisted of biosafety procedure and then started to implement to this in consequence of the international regulations. As a result of the studies carried out in Turkey, the legislations enacted in 2010 year were announced to public opinion as 'Biosafety Law". 'Biosafety Law" in Turkey are investigated in depth way in this study, thus it is identified that some items of the Law are not sufficiently clear, and there are also some adequacies and deficiencies herein. It is though that a substantial gap is filled on this topic if required infrastructure amendments and precautions are provided. In this study, it is defined that the Law will not constitute a significant effect in short and middle period, but most of the legislations enacted are related with feed and livestock sectors in the framework of consumption and availability. It is not to be approved the crops made application to use as a food yet partial permissions are implemented for feed and livestock sectors. It is declared that some crops will be able to match suitability for use after refined and processing. Commercial variations are occurred from the Law came into force and it is observed that some dislocations to the countries do not produce transgenic production for the crops imported. Within the scope of Biosafety Law, Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) was investigated, and it is understood that it is not to enable to be convenience to criterions in local production from taken the alarms, thus it is thought this situation gives more problems on transgenic production and trading. It is seen the RASFF system as a guide for Turkey, thus it will be able to provide to be reduced the problems taken place. In terms of socio-economic circumstance, while it is allowed to enter the transgenic crops to the country owing to this Law, on the other hand it is not to allow using as production purposeful, it does not occur to threat for producers, so it is predicted to be problems in price equilibrium. For consumers, it is thought that they are not present to use transgenic crops, they need to be informed on this issue, and labeling and traceability have huge importance for consumer welfare.