Activists occupy labs associated with GM trials

2nd June 2008

Envi­ron­men­tal pro­tes­tors from Earth First! UK today staged a peace­ful protest at the lab­o­ra­to­ry and offices of the Nation­al Insti­tute for Agri­cul­tur­al Botany (NIAB), in Gir­ton, Cam­bridge. About a dozen activists invad­ed the site and hung ban­ners from build­ings in protest at a tri­al for genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied (GM) pota­toes being car­ried out at the Insti­tute by BASF, a Ger­man based com­pa­ny.

2nd June 2008
NIAB banner hang
Envi­ron­men­tal pro­tes­tors from Earth First! UK today staged a peace­ful protest at the lab­o­ra­to­ry and offices of the Nation­al Insti­tute for Agri­cul­tur­al Botany (NIAB), in Gir­ton, Cam­bridge. About a dozen activists invad­ed the site and hung ban­ners from build­ings in protest at a tri­al for genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied (GM) pota­toes being car­ried out at the Insti­tute by BASF, a Ger­man based com­pa­ny.

The protest was timed to coin­cide with a nation­al day of action on food and cli­mate change and with the Unit­ed Nations Food and Agri­cul­ture Sum­mit, being held this week in Rome.

Rosie Perkins, a spokesper­son for Earth First! UK said:

“Today’s protest was staged to send a clear mes­sage to sci­en­tists, com­pa­nies and politi­cians across the world; that mes­sage is that genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied food is not the answer to either cli­mate change or world food short­ages and we stand here today in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the many farm­ers and local food pro­duc­ers across the world who are speak­ing out against GM crops.

“In recent months, sci­en­tists have been push­ing and push­ing for more GM crops to be grown, claim­ing they are the solu­tion to many of the prob­lems we face today. How­ev­er, their claims con­sis­tent­ly ignore the social and envi­ron­men­tal impacts of GM crops, which include the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of crops to dis­ease as glob­al agri­cul­ture becomes more indus­tri­alised and less genet­i­cal­ly diverse, as well as the impact of tying food pro­duc­tion even clos­er in to big busi­ness and glob­al cor­po­ra­tions. We firm­ly belief that the increas­ing indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of agri­cul­ture ben­e­fits nei­ther pro­duc­er nor con­sumer and we need to look to a future of low-input, diverse, local food pro­duc­tion.”

“The GM tri­al at NIAB is being con­duct­ed under siege-like con­di­tions with high lev­els of secu­ri­ty, includ­ing a per­ma­nent secu­ri­ty per­son­nel pres­ence, high met­al fences, alarms and flood­lights. The fact that this tri­al is tak­ing place under such con­di­tions clear­ly demon­strates the con­tempt in which the peo­ple of this coun­try hold the devel­op­ment of these crops.”

The BASF pota­to tri­al at NIAB is one of only 2 out­door field tri­als tak­ing place in the UK this year and is a tri­al for blight resis­tance in GM pota­toes; a fur­ther tri­al for nema­tode resis­tance is tak­ing place near Leeds, under the aus­pices of Leeds Uni­ver­si­ty and has also met with local oppo­si­tion.