Protesters decontaminate the UK’s last remaining GM potato trial

Dur­ing the night of Fri­day 6th July, a group of activists con­verged on Britain’s last remain­ing GM tri­al site just out­side Cam­bridge. They scaled the secu­ri­ty fences and destroyed the crop of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied pota­toes.

Biohazard (red)Dur­ing the night of Fri­day 6th July, a group of activists con­verged on Britain’s last remain­ing GM tri­al site just out­side Cam­bridge. They scaled the secu­ri­ty fences and destroyed the crop of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied pota­toes.

The pota­to plants were already flow­er­ing, spread­ing genet­ic con­ta­gion into the sur­round­ing coun­try­side.

A sim­i­lar tri­al planned in Hull was aban­doned ear­li­er this year after a strong cam­paign and mas­sive con­cern from near­by farm­ers. With the destruc­tion of the Cam­bridge crop, Britain is once again GM free.

Pub­lic con­cern and demon­stra­tions had failed to sway NIAB, the Nation­al Insti­tute for Agri­cul­ture and Botany, who are car­ry­ing out the five-year tri­al on behalf of BASF, a multi­na­tion­al chem­i­cal cor­po­ra­tion. Many feel that if cor­po­ra­tions refuse to lis­ten to pub­lic opin­ion it is nec­es­sary to take direct action.

Fri­day’s action fol­lows the lat­est in a series of protests, on the pre­vi­ous Sun­day (July 1st), when demon­stra­tors marched on the pota­to field. On that occa­sion, they were met by over­whelm­ing num­bers of police and two par­tic­i­pants were arrest­ed.

This time, how­ev­er, no such obsta­cles were met, and the activists were able to suc­cess­ful­ly decon­t­a­m­i­nate the field.

If this tri­al had been allowed to run full term it could have led to a whole new gen­er­a­tion of GM crop tri­als in this coun­try. Fri­day night’s events show that pub­lic con­cern about GM food and will­ing­ness to take direct action to keep Britain GM free remain high.