China cracks down on Black Sea canola oil

SASKATOON — China is reporting a huge uptick in detections of GMOs in Black Sea canola oil shipments.

Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus all ban the production of GM crops, yet Chinese customs inspectors are rejecting shipments of vegetable oil from those nations, according to a report in the Dim Sums blog published by retired U.S. Department of Agriculture economist Fred Gale.

China rejected 88 shipments totaling 6,271 tonnes during the first three months of 2026. That is up from 38 shipments for all of 2025 and 10 in 2024.

Canola oil comprised 74 of the 88 rejections with 59 of those from Kazakhstan, 13 from Russia and one each from Belarus and Ukraine.

UkrAgroConsult reports that there is heightened scrutiny over GM contamination in China resulting in increasingly complicated customs clearance procedures.

“This increased regulatory attention is creating additional uncertainty for traders and importers,” stated UkrAgroConsult.

Gale said there are reports out of Kazakhstan that Chinese officials have put three Kazakh companies on a blacklist and suspended the operations of two others, while five more are on the brink of bankruptcy.

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Chinese customs lists show that 10 Russian companies have had canola oil rejected by China in 2026.

“This week a Russian official announced that China had banned imports of rapeseed oil from eight Russian companies due to GMO detections,” Gale said in his blog.

Genetically modified products can be imported into China, but only after extensive testing and registration. None of the Black Sea shipments were registered as GM products.

Russia is the top supplier of canola oil to China, with imports from that country amounting to US$497.6 million during the first three months of 2026.

Canada used to be the top supplier of canola oil to China, but sales to that market began to tail off in 2021 and completely dried up after China imposed a 100 per cent tariff on Canadian canola oil on March 20, 2025. 

The Canola Council of Canada was contacted for this story but declined to comment.

An industry expert who requested anonymity said he smiles when he hears reports that China detected GMOs in oil shipments.

“Everything I have read is that that is maybe not even feasible,” he said.

“The DNA of the GMO is impossible to find, especially once you refine an oil. Anything bottled for example, good luck finding any sort of remnants of GMO DNA.”

He suspects this is more of a mislabelling issue — that Chinese authorities are upset that oil is coming in labelled as non-GMO, when it isn’t.

Canada’s canola sector is vigilant about waiting for GMO traits to be approved by China before commercializing any products in that market containing those traits.

He doesn’t know if China’s crackdown on oil from Russia and Kazakhstan will benefit Canada in its efforts to reduce the punitive tariff on Canadian canola oil or lead to increased seed demand if China decides to crush more domestically.

The expert noted that the volumes in the rejected shipments are small considering Canada has shipped more than one million tonnes of oil to that market in some years.