AFP - Bulgaria's parliament on Thursday tightened restrictions on genetically modified food crops in the face of pressure from environmentalists seeking a total ban.

Environment campaigners attacked an initial version of the bill that proposed to drop restrictions on GM crops being grown close to protected nature areas and release GM wheat, fruit, vegetables and other products on to the market.

In the face of such attacks, lawmakers passed a revised bill that keeps existing restrictions and calls for 30-kilometre (19-mile) buffer zones around the nature parks where GM crops are banned.

In practice, the new rules leave just a few patches of land unprotected and none of them big enough for large-scale industrial farming, experts said.

Under the new rules, GM hybrids of the traditional Bulgarian crops would be banned from the market and scientists would be forbidden from conducting any GM experiments outside their labs.

The final bill was applauded by environmentalists as "restrictive enough" even if it failed to specifically impose a total ban on the cultivation and import of genetically modified food.

The new legislation left the ministries of environment and agriculture to decide on a case-by-case basis whether to allow the cultivation of products already allowed by the European Commission.

Both ministries said they would never give any GM product the greenlight, but also warned that the country could not ensure that foods with GM ingredients did not enter the Bulgarian market from abroad.

Already in 2009, 7.8 percent of all foodstuffs tested by the authorities contained genetically modified organisms.

In the meantime, a poll by the state NCIOM polling institute showed this week that a total of 97 percent of the 1,214 people polled said that Bulgaria should remain free from GM products.