GM Protesters plant a good idea — updated (& campaign statement & extra photos)

21.04.2007 — GM Pro­tes­tors have plant­ed non-GM organ­ic pota­toes on a site that it is believed the Gov­ern­ment will autho­rise for the test­ing of a BASF genet­i­cal­ly mod­ifed pota­to.

About 250 peo­ple attend­ed the protest in Hull to lis­ten to speech­es and enjoy a GM free pota­to pic­nic — some food pro­vid­ed by Veg­gies of Not­ting­ham and music. Pro­test­ers then spread across the large (sev­er­al acre) field, with a few police, some on hors­es, oth­ers on trail bikes, some even had learned to walk. Some film­ing. Some impo­tent­ly ask­ing peo­ple to leave the field. Then we did because we’d run out of pota­toes.

The tri­al site for Cam­bridge has already been approved. After hav­ing to move the pro­posed north­ern site as a pre­vi­ous farmer backed out the clos­ing date for sub­mis­sions about the new site near Hull was yes­ter­day. Local farm­ers have already tried to get the tri­al stopped.

Many local farm­ers are reliant on bees keep­ers com­ing to the area to pol­lenate their crops, this won’t be able to hap­pen with the tri­al of the genet­i­cal­ly mod­ifed crop close by. The muta­toes cre­at­ed by Chem­i­cal Multi­na­tion­al BASF has pre­vi­ous­ly been reject­ed by the Nether­lands because the lack of tri­als in a con­trolled (greenhouse/lab) envi­ron­ment. BASF also pulled out of Ire­land because unlike the UK Gov­erne­ment they placed restric­tions thay the Ger­man based cor­po­ra­tion found to harsh for them.

http://www.mutatoes.org/
http://www.hedonagainstgm.org.uk/
http://www.cambridgeaction.net/gmconcern
http://www.myspace.com/gmfreepotatoes

*********************Press release***********************************

Pro­tes­tors plant GM tri­al site with organ­ic pota­toes. (press release)

Peo­ple from all over the coun­try are cur­rent­ly plant­i­ng organ­ic pota­toes in the field pro­posed as a GM pota­to tri­al site out­side Hull. It is hoped that the dona­tion of safe spuds will pre­vent the plant­i­ng of the con­tro­ver­sial crop, which threat­ens the liveli­hoods of local bor­age grow­ers and organ­ic farm­ers.

Anna Lock explained;
“If you want to eat good safe pota­toes, you have to plant good safe pota­toes. By plant­i­ng organ­ic pota­toes in this field today, the field will be ren­dered unsuit­able for the GM tri­al. Sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­ments need con­trol­lable vari­ables, tiny organ­ic seed pota­toes hid­den deep in the ground are a vari­able con­trolled only by nature. These seed pota­toes will grow and BASF’s exper­i­ment will no longer be pos­si­ble on this site.”

The ral­ly start­ed as a GM-free pota­to pic­nic accom­pa­nied by live music with around 300 pro­tes­tors, includ­ing kids and cyclists and many dressed as Mr Pota­to Head. A large num­ber then set out across the field to plant organ­ic pota­toes. The ral­ly marks the end of the gov­ern­ments con­sul­ta­tion process on the exper­i­ment. The crop is the first to be pro­posed after pub­lic pres­sure bought an end to the tri­al­ing of GM in the UK near­ly 3 years ago.

Yolande Black trav­elled all the way from Bris­tol to attend today’s protest,
” I think the gov­ern­ment is test­ing the water with these pota­to tri­als, and it is vital­ly impor­tant that we show them that resis­tance is still alive and kick­ing and that we will con­tin­ue fight­ing them every step of the way. GM is not a solu­tion. 20% of con­ven­tion­al pota­to vari­eties are already resis­tant to blight and BASF have admit­ted that there is no mar­ket for GM food in the UK.

80 acres of bor­age have recent­ly been sown near the tri­al site, and the crop will fail if bee­keep­ers keep to the British Bee­keep­ers Asso­ci­a­tions guide­lines of keep­ing hives at least 6km dis­tant from GM crops. The GM farmer has announced that he will not pro­ceed if the issue is not resolved for his neigh­bours.

Note to edi­tors:

1. Con­tact details: Carl McCoy on 07858 177 178 or vis­it the web­site at Our web­sites are www.mutatoes.org
2. The site is one of two due to be plant­ed this year, the sec­ond pro­posed tri­al site at the Nation­al Insti­tute of Agri­cul­ture and Botany (NIAB) in Cam­bridgeshire last week­end. The Hull tri­al site is to replace the one in Der­byshire after the farmer who pulled out. BASF intends to con­tin­ue the tri­als for the next five years
3. Bor­age is a lucra­tive crop grown as a source of Starflower Oil and used as a health­food sup­ple­ment and in skin­care creams and cos­met­ics. BASF failed to con­tact the local bor­age farm­ers in advance of the tri­al. The farm­ers stand to lose up to £80,000.
4. On 5th April a pub­lic meet­ing and debate about the plant­i­ng of the GM pota­toes was held in Hedon. Dr Arpad Pusz­tai was one of the speak­ers attend­ing. His exper­i­ments into feed­ing GM pota­toes to rats appeared to demon­strate the GM pota­toes cause dam­age to the rodents immune sys­tems and growth rates. The work raised mas­sive pub­lic con­cern and aware­ness of GM, but the exper­i­ments were nev­er repeat­ed. His evi­dence, and those of BAS­F’s PR rep­re­sen­ta­tive, caused the local coun­cil to renew their 2003 stance against GM. Oppo­si­tion from local peo­ple attend­ing was also strong, and a peti­tion is due to be hand­ed over to DEFRA and the farmer con­cerned before the ral­ly.
5. In North Amer­i­ca where GM crops are now wide­spread, cross-pol­li­na­tion reg­u­lar­ly con­t­a­m­i­nates sur­round­ing crops, even jump­ing species. Ear­li­er in 2007 it was found that the exper­i­men­tal rice line LL601 had con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed world­wide rice sup­plies, caus­ing mas­sive loss of mar­kets, despite assur­ances that it was in a low risk cross pol­li­na­tion cat­e­go­ry.
6. BASF is a multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny based in Ger­many. They were part of the noto­ri­ous AG Far­ben which man­u­fac­tured poi­son gas for the con­cen­tra­tion camps, used slave labour and was con­vict­ed of war crimes at the end of WW2. It claims to be the largest chem­i­cal com­pa­ny in the world, and in 2005 it was the 3rd biggest glob­al sell­er of pes­ti­cides.
7. Both Ire­land and the Nether­lands were due to run BAS­F’s GM pota­to tri­als, but these were aban­doned after con­cerns were raised about the envi­ron­men­tal threats they posed.
8. Pro­tes­tors are plant­i­ng around 3000 organ­ic seed pota­toes of sev­er­al dif­fer­ent vari­eties.

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Wrong field, right result

Giv­en a 4‑figure map ref­er­ence which only has one clear unplant­ed field, it’s an under­stand­able mis­take.

Even if it’s the wrong field, it does­n’t make much dif­fer­ence. The pea crop is most­ly still under­ground, only a few shoots have bro­ken through the soil. This means the peo­ple walk­ing around the field did no appre­cia­ble dam­age to the crop.

The real test is not pota­toes for blight resis­tance; it’s about test­ing the UK pub­lic for GM resis­tance. By hav­ing over 100 peo­ple tak­ing direct action on the site in broad day­light in front of the cops has giv­en a clear result to the test.

The pea farmer isn’t going to be out of pock­et, and the prospec­tive GM farmer and the BASF direc­tors are going to have the clear mes­sage that wher­ev­er they plant it, it will be ripped up.

Well done to every­one involved.

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25.04.2007: State­ment from Mutatoes.org and cam­paign­ers against Hull’s GM pota­to tri­als

On Sat­ur­day, over 250 peo­ple from around the coun­try attend­ed a ral­ly in Hull in a pow­er­ful and vibrant dis­play of resis­tance to the rein­tro­duc­tion of GM crops to the UK.

In a bid to inval­i­date the tri­al, thou­sands of organ­ic pota­toes were plant­ed across a two hectare field. It was felt nec­es­sary to take action before plant­i­ng because it is vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble to decon­t­a­m­i­nate a root crop after it is in the ground. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we dis­cov­ered today that the field plant­ed on Sat­ur­day was not the pro­posed tri­al site and was instead owned by farmer David Buck­ton. We apol­o­gise to David Buck­ton.

With the infor­ma­tion that we had and the short time scale avail­able to us (between the late announce­ment of the tri­al site and the first pos­si­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty to plant the GM pota­toes) we sin­cere­ly believed this to be the cor­rect field.

There were sev­er­al rea­sons for the error made:
• The pub­lic were not giv­en suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion by the gov­ern­ment who sup­plied only a 4‑figure grid ref­er­ence for the loca­tion of the tri­al (an area of 1 square km).
• In a pub­lic meet­ing on April 5, a local farmer sug­gest­ed that the pro­posed site was cur­rent­ly plant­ed with oil-seed rape. This was flat­ly denied by the BASF rep­re­sen­ta­tive who implied that the field was clear and ready for the tri­al.
• The only field in the area bor­dered by Marfleet, Hedon and Pre­ston where ground had been pre­pared but which had not yet been plant­ed with a crop was the one just East of Marfleet. There were no unplant­ed fields in the area
cov­ered by the four fig­ure grid ref­er­ence giv­en by DEFRA. Con­se­quent­ly, because these grid ref­er­ences are noto­ri­ous­ly unre­li­able we inves­ti­gat­ed all fields with­in sev­er­al hun­dred metres of this ref­er­ence, the only one pre­pared for plant­i­ng, but not yet sown, was the one in ques­tion.
• The Government’s con­sul­ta­tion peri­od end­ed on 20th April, with the 21st being the first date that the GM pota­toes could be plant­ed; hence why the Ral­ly was called for last Sat­ur­day.

The deci­sion was made under pres­sure, by a cam­paign only three weeks old; a cam­paign which pulled off an auda­cious action nonethe­less. It is our posi­tion that we made the best judg­ment that we could as to which was the pro­posed tri­al site. While it is regret­table that the wrong site and farmer were tar­get­ed, we would also like to make it clear to the gov­ern­ment and to indus­try that peo­ple will con­tin­ue to dis­rupt the plant­i­ng of GM crops despite the dif­fi­cul­ties faced by this lack of full dis­clo­sure.

Mutatoes.org has only been in exis­tence for three weeks now, and work­ing to a tight sched­ule, with very few peo­ple. In that time we gath­ered loads of up-for-it peo­ple will­ing to go into a field in broad day­light and take direct action for the plan­et. It was a suc­cess­ful action in all oth­er aspects: the pota­toes were plant­ed, we did it under the noses of the police and there were no arrests. The mes­sage sent out is clear — attempt to grow GM crops in this coun­try and we will take action. Of that we remain proud, and thank every­one who came along and took part, in what ever role.

Despite a mis­take being made we believe it was far bet­ter that we went ahead and chal­lenged the GM tri­als than stood by doing noth­ing. We clear­ly demon­strat­ed the British pub­lic are will­ing to take on the multi­na­tion­als / gov­ern­ment on this issue. Though it was, and remains, our avowed inten­tion to pre­vent the tri­als from going ahead, we are ful­ly aware that these tri­als are as much a test of pub­lic opin­ion as a gen­uine sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­ment. Con­se­quent­ly, although the wrong field was tar­get­ted we still achieved one of our pri­ma­ry objec­tives of demon­strat­ing that the British pubic are res­olute­ly opposed to GM crops and will take action to resist their rein­tro­duc­tion into the UK.

The multi­na­tion­als behind GM crops have bid­ed their time since Bay­er pulled out from the last tri­als three years ago. But they have been press­ing ahead in the rest of the world. It is vital that we, as a move­ment, rise to the occa­sion, and demon­strate that resis­tance is as vigourous as ever. We are unapolo­getic for what we have attempt­ed to do and we will not cease our efforts to keep the UK GM free.

And as use­ful byprod­uct – we now know where the actu­al field is, thanks to the police…

rally@mutatoes.org
http://www.mutatoes.org