Action
Briefing
Oct
2003 - Nov 2003
The Newsletter
of
Birmingham Friends of the
Earth
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Action
Briefing |
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The Newsletter
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A GM Digest: can you stomach it?
Tractors and Trolleys Parade
13th October
If the Government approves the
commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) crops they could be in our countryside
as early as next spring.
Friends of the Earth together with the Five Year Freeze, Genetic Engineering Network and GM Free Cymru are holding the Tractor and Trolley Parade, a National Rally in London to demonstrate a consensus between farmers, environmentalists and campaigners on their concerns about GM.
Led by tractors and accompanied by samba and ceilidh bands, hundreds of people will push decorated trolleys full of GM-free produce between the National Farmers Union and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to hand in messages of opposition against GM.
The Tractor and Trolley Parade intends to make sure that GM is on the political agenda as soon as politicians get back from the summer recess. Hundreds of people have committed to coming to London to make sure that 2003 isn’t the last GM-free harvest in the UK.
GM-free carnival in Coventry
11th October
Organic Farmer Gerald Miles will
be driving his tractor to the Tractor and Trolley Parade in London from Pembrokeshire
via Coventry and Ryton Organic Gardens. At Coventry we will send the tractor
off to London followed by a GM-Free Carnival Float.
The programme for 11th October is as follows:
Join us to celebrate a GM Free Coventry and GM Free Britain. Bring decorations for the float and instruments. You may even want to join the group of cyclists behind the float as it leaves Coventry.
We will drive over two days to the parade in London. Some people will be travelling by bicycle or by car as part of a convoy to London with Gerald’s tractor and carnival float.
If you would like to join them or go down by train on Monday 13th please call Jenny on 024 7667 6948 or John on 024 7622 5395. For more info see www.tractorandtrolley.com
'GM Nation?' verdict published
The Government’s public consultation
on GM was published on 24th October. The report concludes that the public doesn’t
want GM food and doesn’t want the Government to allow GM crops to be commercially
grown in the UK.
The seven ‘key messages’ are: 1. People are generally uneasy about GM; 2. The more people engage in GM issues, the harder their attitudes and more intense their concerns; 3. There is little support for early commercialisation; 4. There is widespread mistrust of government and multinational companies; 5. There is broad desire to know more and for more research to be done; 6. Developing countries have special interests; 7. The debate was welcomed and valued.
A mere 36,557 official responses to 'GM Nation?' were returned, in the form of a multiple choice questionnaire. More than half (54%) said they never want to see GM crops grown in the UK. A further 18% would find GM crops acceptable only if there was no risk of cross-contamination, and 13% wanted more research before any decision was made. Only 2% said that GM crops were acceptable “in any circumstances” and only eight per cent were happy to eat GM food (86% not).
The debate organisers also conducted a series of separate interviews with groups of people who didn’t take part in 'GM Nation?', to see if there was a “silent majority” with different views. The results of this “Narrow But Deep” research “suggested that when people in the general population become more engaged in GM issues, and choose to discover more about them, they harden their attitudes to GM”. This included “more concern/greater unease about all the risks most frequently associated with GM. In particular, the more they choose to discover about GM, the more convinced they are that no-one knows enough about the long-term effects of GM on human health.”
GM-free Britain campaign
An EU ruling on 2 September 2003
that Upper Austria cannot declare itself a GM-free Zone will not impact on those
UK local authorities that have voted to exclude GM crops from their areas. Upper
Austria’s failed bid for a blanket GM ban used different regulations (EU
Treaty Article 95(5)) than the one Friends of the Earth is using to help establish
GM-free zones in the UK.
Unfortunately, EU law does not allow areas to impose blanket bans on GM crops, but it does allow them to be banned on case by case basis. As there is good evidence that the first generation of GM crops may lead to long-term environmental damage and contaminate conventional and organic food, the Government should vote against GM marketing applications which do not have sound supporting evidence.
To date twelve local authorities have voted to used Article 19 to exclude GM cops from their areas: Cornwall, Somerset, South Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Cumbria, Warwickshire, Rydale, South Hams, York, East Riding and the Lake District National Parks Authority.
James Botham