Action Briefing Feb 2003 - Mar 2003
	The Newsletter of Birmingham Friends of the Earth

West Midlands News

GM Free Warwickshire

As a start to our GM Free Warwickshire campaign we wanted to target organisations who have signed up nationally to the Five Year Freeze on GMOs. If GM can be pushed higher up on their agendas then this is the first building block for a strong local coalition for GM Free Warwickshire.

To this end we organised a public meeting on Saturday 25th January which drew about 50 people from organisations such as Christian Aid, the Womens Institute, HDRA, UNISON, beekeepers and local traders plus green groups and other maverick individuals from across the county.

We began with three key speakers and a question and answer session, followed by brainstorming ideas for action. Speakers were Maureen O’ Sullivan from Warwick University, Pete Riley from Friends of the Earth and Tom Baxter chair of Stratford Agenda 21. Between them they outlined the main environmental and food safety arguments against GM, issues with ownership and patenting of crops and the potential trade war over GM with the US. Pete introduced the FoE GM Free Britain Campaign as a good way to link up nationally.

Following this, an hour’s discussion generated plenty of ideas for action. These included actions at the prestigious Royal Show at the National Agricultural Centre in the summer, work with religious groups, stalls at the WI biannual conference, providing information for beekeepers, different ways to lobby politicians and getting food retailers to go GM free by raising the issue in the press.

Two broad focuses for work over the coming months will be: (1) Creating a GM Free Land Register (inspired by the fine examples in Shropshire and Worcestershire). The idea is to get farmers, businesses, allotment holders, window-box owners, schools, etc to register their patch GM free. If a large number of people sign up this is a powerful political statement. It will look even more impressive when land declared GM free is plotted on a map of Warwickshire; (2) Lobbying Local Authorities to declare themselves GM free zones under article 19 of the European Deliberate Release Directive. Our first target will be the Warwickshire County, followed by the boroughs and districts.

We will also be doing a West Midlands GM Newsletter - nothing at all glossy, but we thought a short (1 page) regular newsletter would be useful for keeping GM activists in touch. Contact - Alistair Waugh 01527 450067 or Jenny Sansom 024 7667 6948.

Our next meeting for GM free Warwickshire is on the 23rd February at 3.30pm. Venue TBC- contact Dave Passingham on 07973 846605.

Chris Crean