Potatoes imported from region allegedly under chemical attack: Food Engineers’ Chamber

The Chamber of Food Engineers released a press statement on Turkey’s 4-thousand-ton potato import from Syria, also addressing the Minister of Food, Agriculture, and Livestock with questions about the safety of the potatoes
Sunday, 01 July 2018 14:19

The Chamber of Food Engineers’ provincial branch in the city of İzmir, Turkey, issued a press release about Turkey’s potato import from Syria. Uğur Toprak, in the name of the executive board of the branch, emphasised that import was not a solution to the problems in Turkey’s agriculture, and pointed out that the area from which the import was to be done has been an area of conflict that is claimed to have been under chemical attack.

The Chamber said that potato was a product that could grow anywhere on earth, and that Turkey was among the 20 countries that produce most potatoes in the world, but also stated that cultivation areas have been diminishing in the last 5 years. “Though the Minister of Economy indicated pawnbrokers and speculators as the reason of mark-ups,” read the statement, the real reasons were “especially the aridity of the topsoil as a result of global warming, the diminishing of the water sources in proportion to the growth of the population, and the other economic factors that cause the mark-ups in agricultural and animal raw materials, in addition to the diminishing of the cultivation areas.”

Explaining that the Chamber had serious questions about the import of 4 thousand tonnes of potatoes from Syria, a country where a civil war has been going on for years, the statement addressed the Minister of Food, Agriculture, and Livestock who said, “Where should we import it from, while we have Syria?” about the import:

1. Have the potatoes in question been analysed by an accredited institution before they entered our country?

2. Have the soil and water in the region where the potatoes were grown been analysed, again, by an accredited institution?

3. Are there any chemical residue and/or heavy metals (lead, mercury, arsenic, etc.) in the potatoes, or the soil or the water?

4. When will the results of the analyses we hope to have been completed be shared with the public?

The statement also underlined that it was necessary to use the sources of the country to increase agricultural production, to purge the supporting policies of liberal approaches, policies must be adopted to free Turkey of dependence on other countries.