The smelly, soya-based salami that replaced meat on Romanian dinner tables during the rule of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu long symbolised the misery of communism.
Almost 15 years after Ceausescu's overthrow, Constantin Necsulescu, 61, who grows genetically modified crops on his 500 hectare (1,236 acres) farm near the Danube river, says soya now means prosperity. "It sharply cuts my use of chemicals, labour and fuel. It's incredibly profitable. My costs have halved," he said, pointing at his newest acquisition - a John Deere tractor.
Environmentalists accuse US biotech firms pioneering genetically modified organisms (GMOs) of using poorer east European countries as a back door to a reluctant European Union. Firms such as Monsanto and Pioneer Hi-Bred, a unit of DuPont, say good weather, fertile farmland and a favourable government attitude brought them to Romania and Bulgaria, which expect to join the EU in 2007.
"Romania allowed us field trials," said Ioan Sabau of Monsanto Romania. "Ask any farmer now and they'll tell you they are not even thinking of growing organic plants anymore." The companies say their technology helps fight hunger and poverty but environmental groups and many Europeans oppose GMOs, which they fear might be potentially unsafe for humans.
The EU has not authorised experimental or commercial growth of new gene-modified crops since 1998.
Although Brussels partly lifted the ban in May by allowing imports of a new GM maize type, Washington says there is further to go and it will continue to challenge the ban at the World Trade Organisation.
Romania, Europe's biggest soya grower until 1989, is the sole producer of GM soybeans on the continent with about 35,000 hectares (86,490 acres) under cultivation. Experts predict huge losses for the country after it joins the EU if it develops large-scale GM crops.
"We'll surely get in trouble. There will be nothing to export if we have only GMOs on offer," said Ion Scurteli of the ANCER grain wholesalers association.
The same applies to Bulgaria, which, according to the international biotech promotion group ISAAA, has been growing several thousand hectares of herbicide-tolerant GM maize. EU experts said they did not expect Romania to suffer.
"It's unlikely that Romania will increase the acreage of GMOs so much that it will face problems in the EU after 2007," said Mihai Dumitru, the Commission's agriculture expert in Bucharest.
For the moment, GM crops represent about 0.4 percent of the total farmland in Romania, where agriculture accounts for 10 percent of gross domestic product.
Romania, burdened with a poor environmental record and strewn with abandoned communist-era factories, has no problem with GMOs.
"We're staunch promoters of the hi-tech GMOs. Romania has ideal conditions to develop highly productive, cost-saving crops," said Constantin Sin, a senior Agriculture Ministry official.
The government plans to boost the acreage of GM soya by 40 percent and also allow GM maize in 2005, Sin added. However, uncontrolled seed trading is common in Romania, a patchwork of contested farmland since Stalinist collectivisation was scrapped after 1989.
Neighbouring Serbia, which banned GMOs, discovered 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) sown with GM soya in the flatlands of its northern Vojvodina province and said the seeds had been smuggled from Romania.
Pioneer said GMOs would not spread across borders if rules were observed. "Romania must apply the EU's labelling and traceability rules," said Pioneer Romania director Ion Sabaila. Environmentalists say there is no way to stop GM crops from spreading.
"The only natural thing about GMOs is the way that such crops spread: they do crossbreed, they do cross-pollinate, they are carried by the wind and by insects," said Greenpeace activist Dan Hindsgaul.
"The crops get mixed with normal crops...everywhere the contamination spreads, the biotech firms rejoice. They own the patent and nature spreads their patented GE genes," he added.
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