Countering the GM come back summer camp

Bring your stove and tent for an anti-GM week­end. Fri 22nd pm: Camp­ing avail­able. Sat 23rd: Deliv­er­ing a trail­er load of organ­ic spuds to the doors of the John Innes Cen­tre in protest at GM pota­to tri­als there. Sun 24th: a day-long plan­ning ses­sion: GM is com­ing back – we’ll be ready. See below for more infor­ma­tion.

The Spuds Don’t Work ral­ly, Sat­ur­day 23rd July

British tri­als of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied blight resis­tant spuds have been fail­ing for the last ten years. But a con­ven­tion­al­ly bred vari­ety of blight resis­tant pota­to has been avail­able for 3 years. So why are we still pay­ing for this dan­ger­ous exper­i­ment?

Come ride with us on the back of a trail­er load of safe effec­tive spuds as we go to deliv­er them to the Sains­bury Lab­o­ra­to­ry out­side Nor­wich. It’s one of only two pos­si­ble open air tri­als for GM crops in Britain this year. Yet despite being pub­licly fund­ed, it’s so secre­tive no one will even say if it’s been plant­ed. Join us for tunes, chips and good cheer as we go and show them that we have already got the answers they say they’re look­ing for.

Prac­ti­cal details

Meet at the Forum in Nor­wich City Cen­tre at 12 noon for free chips and fun. We will set off from there to the John Innes Research Cen­tre by bike, trac­tor and coach at 1pm. Bring water­proofs and umbrel­las! If you would like to trav­el from town to the John Innes Cen­tre by coach or if you want help find­ing accom­mo­da­tion (camp­ing or oth­er­wise) get in touch as soon as you can, and by Fri­day 15th July at the lat­est. Con­tact info@stopgm.org.uk

Camp­ing

Camp­ing is avail­able at the Nor­folk Show­ground on the 22nd and 23rd July. Camp­ing will be in the Red Car Park (note the Coun­try Music Fes­ti­val is tak­ing part in the main show­ground). There will be access to toi­lets and drink­ing water. Arrive after 4pm on Fri­day 22nd. Red car park is to the east of the Park and Ride.
Bus: you can catch the Costessey Park and Ride to the Park and Ride itself (Mon-Fri). This ser­vice takes 20 mins and runs approx. every 20 mins from the bus sta­tion run­ning via the uni­ver­si­ty. Alter­na­tive­ly catch Kon­nect bus 4 from the bus sta­tion and ask for the Show­ground. This ser­vice runs approx. every 25 min­utes. Bus­es run reg­u­lar­ly between the train and bus sta­tion in Nor­wich.

Coun­ter­ing the GM come back sum­mer camp
Sun­day 24th July, 2011

A day long camp to get pro­duc­tive and plan the next stages of the cam­paign. Camp­ing spaces avail­able from Fri­day after­noon. Come equipped with a stove and food for self-cater­ing. The site is five min­utes from a reg­u­lar bus route to the city cen­tre. Con­tact info@stopgm.org.uk as soon as pos­si­ble and by Fri­day 15th July at the lat­est to let us know you want camp­ing spaces reserved for you.

What we need…
…for both events…

You, and the peo­ple you know, and any­one you think might be inter­est­ed.

This project is being worked on by Stop GM in con­junc­tion with the Genet­ic Engi­neer­ing Net­work. Sev­er­al expe­ri­enced grass­roots cam­paign­ers will be work­ing on the project from now until the event, but we need help get­ting the word out. If you think you could help by dis­trib­ut­ing email infor­ma­tion about the event, drop­ping it about in any social media you may be involved in, let­ting your local grow­ing projects or social jus­tice groups know, dis­trib­ut­ing our ‘Lit­tle Red Trac­tor and the Quest of the GM-free Spuds’ leaflet or even orga­niz­ing a coach to attend from your area, we’d love to hear from you.

For more infor­ma­tion phone 07595 506673 or email info@stopgm.org.uk. Vis­it www.stopgm.org.uk for more back­ground infor­ma­tion on GM and cam­paign­ing against it in gen­er­al.

A tale of two spuds…
For the last 10 years, researchers at the Sains­bury lab­o­ra­to­ry at the John Innes Cen­tre in Nor­wich have spent 1.7 mil­lion pounds of pub­lic mon­ey fail­ing to devel­op a genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied pota­to resis­tant to the fun­gal dis­ease blight. This project is so secre­tive and unac­count­able that the lab­o­ra­to­ry has refused to even con­firm if a tri­al has been plant­ed this sea­son, or if they’ve been forced to aban­don any hopes of mak­ing the tech­nol­o­gy work. Pub­lic rejec­tion of the risks asso­ci­at­ed with eat­ing genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied food means that even if the engi­neer­ing involved was suc­cess­ful, there would be no mar­ket for the crop.

Mean­while, 3 years ago a small Welsh research char­i­ty ded­i­cat­ed to con­ven­tion­al breed­ing tech­niques devel­oped a spud that is spec­tac­u­lar­ly resis­tant to blight. Not only does the crop pose no threat to health, the envi­ron­ment, or neigh­bour­ing farm­ers; it works. Over 6 dif­fer­ent vari­eties are now avail­able, and being grown on a com­mer­cial scale.

The ratio­nale

The cam­paign against GM crops ten years ago was so suc­cess­ful that GM almost com­plete­ly van­ished from our fields and super­mar­kets, and many peo­ple have for­got­ten the issues asso­ci­at­ed with the tech­nol­o­gy. But in many oth­er parts of the world peas­ant farm­ers have been des­per­ate­ly fight­ing its spread, and laws are chang­ing in Europe that would make it much eas­i­er for GM to be grown in Britain. Despite pre-elec­tion promis­es to the con­trary the coali­tion claims it intends to be ‘the most pro GM this coun­try has ever seen’.

Let’s call time on an out­mod­ed tech­nol­o­gy that con­tin­ues to waste mon­ey in fail­ing projects, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly threat­en­ing the very sci­ence that’s actu­al­ly pro­duc­ing work­ing alter­na­tives quick­ly and cheap­ly. For too long the biotech com­pa­nies have gone unchal­lenged in their claims that GM can
cre­ate gen­uine­ly use­ful crops when in fact all the sig­nif­i­cant advance­ments in the last decade have come through con­ven­tion­al breed­ing.

With the renewed threat of GM on the hori­zon cam­paign­ers need to get togeth­er again to show the rest of the coun­try (and each oth­er) that we’re still here, and we’ve got an even bet­ter case than ever. This is a chance to take the ini­tia­tive with the media, to tell a sto­ry which explains clear­ly and prac­ti­cal­ly why the pro GM lob­by is wrong. That it’s us, and not the cor­po­ra­tions that have the answers to the food cri­sis.

For more infor­ma­tion please check this brief­ing writ­ten to help peo­ple object to the pro­posed field tri­al of GM http://www.gmfreeze.org/publications/briefings/99/ and how to get hold of the solu­tion www.sarvari-trust.org.

Stop GM
info@stopgm.org.uk
www.stopgm.org.uk