Genetics – Page 6 – Earth First!

GM wheat gets the chop, Australia

Update: offices raided week after decontamination / French scientist discovers signs of toxic effects relate

Update: offices raided week after decontamination / French scientist discovers signs of toxic effects related to eating GM foods / action video

14 July 2011

Greenpeace activists, including one mother who wants to protect her family, have stopped a GM wheat experiment outside Canberra this morning.

Two women used whipper snippers to remove a controversial genetically modified (GM) wheat crop before day break.

The activists constructed a decontamination area to safely dispose of the untested and potentially unstable GM organisms.

Safety in question

The activity follows the revelation that Australia’s peak scientific body, CSIRO, is conducting the world’s first human feeding trials of GM wheat, without adequate safety testing.

“This GM wheat should never have left the lab,” said activist and mother, Heather McCabe. “I'm sick of being treated like a dumb Mum who doesn’t understand the science. As far as I’m concerned, my family's health is just too important. GM wheat is not safe, and if the government can't protect the safety of my family, then I will.”

CSIRO’s wheat experiment came under recent scrutiny when eight international scientists and doctors questioned the ethics and scientific rigour behind it. In an open letter the scientists questioned the safety of human feeding trials planned for later this year in which Australians would be fed GM wheat from the Canberra based trials.

Conflict of interest

On 30 June, CSIRO rejected a Freedom of Information request by Greenpeace which requested further information to ensure the safety of the human feeding trials, along with transparent information about the commercial partnerships CSIRO has with foreign biotech companies to commercialise GM wheat.

In a July report – Australia’s Wheat Scandal Greenpeace detailed a major conflict of interest at CSIRO. Two directors of the biotech giant Nufarm – the distributor of Monsanto’s products in Australia – also sat on the CSIRO board at the time of the wheat experiment’s approval. View the infographic detailing the connections

GM wheat has already been rejected in Canada, North America, Russia and the EU. The CSIRO is being used as a front for foreign biotech companies; this has compromised its research and put Australia’s multi-billion dollar wheat industry at risk.

Inevitable contamination

All of the evidence shows that GM can’t be contained in the field. Greenpeace has taken action to protect our food supply being contaminated by experimental GM wheat. Now the Australian Government must step in and protect the health of Australian people.

“We had no choice but to take action to bring an end to this experiment,” said Greenpeace Food campaigner Laura Kelly. “GM has never been proven safe to eat and once released in open experiments, it will contaminate. This is about the protection of our health, the protection of our environment and the protection of our daily bread.”

Trials of potentially unstable GM wheat strains are currently planted in five states and territories across Australia

TAKE ACTION: Tell the government to end its controversial GM wheat trials

READ THE REPORT: The biotech takeover of our daily bread

MORE INFORMATION: Follow the story so far

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’.

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

Latest Action Update

Climbing, blocking, stinking, sabbing earth defenders rock!
Roll on down to the EF! Summer Gathering in mid-August.

Paint-throwing, blockading, rioting, boarding up offices and gathering hundreds of thousands together – all ways to try and defeat the Nuclear Behemoth.

Climbing, blocking, stinking, sabbing earth defenders rock!
Roll on down to the EF! Summer Gathering in mid-August.

Paint-throwing, blockading, rioting, boarding up offices and gathering hundreds of thousands together – all ways to try and defeat the Nuclear Behemoth.

Blockading coal in Bangladesh, copper mining in Peru, Italian ecotage against incineration, Greek firebombs opposing landfill, pro-rickshaw car-smashing in India, actions and camping to protect the Tasmanian forests, and anti-mining trashing of many things in Indonesia…just a taste from around the world of how people campaign to stop the destruction of the earth and it’s inhabitants.

More news from the front lines: travellers digging in, mobile phone mast torching, a first time hunt sabber’s diary, the latest from the GM ‘anti-lobby’, and tracking new developments – UK fracking, FFS!

Plus with the latest advice from AUntie Miffy, contacts and dates to get you in the mood for Captain Swing, download, distribute, subscribe and get out there, and stuck in.

earthfirst.org.uk/efau
[- to subscribe & get the EF!AU as soon as it’s produced, rather than when we put it up here!]

Call out for workshops for EF! Summer Gathering 2011

This year’s Earth First Summer Gathering takes place in East Anglia this year, starting on the 10th of August and running for five days. With six workshops tents we have space for over 100 discussions, presentations and workshops. The spaces are filling up fast, but there is still time to book a spot. So if you’ve got an idea you wish to highlight, whether it’s related to ecological defence or social resistance here is your chance. The gathering is attended by hundreds of individuals interested and participating in struggles around the UK and Europe.

To get in touch just email efsummergathering2011announce@riseup.net with a blurb of for you workshop or discussion and we’ll do our best to fit you in.

For monthly email updates for the gathering subscribe to efsummergathering@lists.riseup.net

The Spuds don’t work. Norwich, noon, 23rd July 2011.

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

****************************************

*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.

*Delivering the answer to GM crops- *

We think the Sainsbury’s laboratory and the government should be told that we’ve found the potatoes they’re looking for. So we’re going to deliver them to the doors of their research centre. We’ll be forming a carnival procession of families and farmers led by the next generation on pedal tractors, each towing a mini trailer of safe spuds. There’ll be pedal powered tunes, and a full sized tractor to jump on. There will almost certainly be chips.

*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. And we know how to turn them into an irresistible photo shoot.

*Our Key media messages*
Genetic Modification is unaccountable, expensive, and it doesn’t work. We need to stop wasting public money on something that no one wants and start celebrating the real advances in agriculture.

*What we need*

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. It’s a grassroots initiative that evolved after one national gathering, several months of pondering and an over excited long weekend in Wales. 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 soon to be produced ‘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 please check briefing to help you object to proposed field trial of GM potatoes (http://www.gmfreeze.org/uploads/63A_spud_briefing_jic_final.pdf), and how to get hold of the solution www.sarvari-trust.org.

Please put it in your diary, forward this message on to anyone who might be interested, and hopefully we’ll see you there.

All the best,

The Stop GM Crew.

http://stopgm.org.uk/

Do You Remember Fairmile?

Join the Silent Victories Bike Ride.

Silent Victories is a free 10 day long bike ride around the South West of England from the 1st -10th July that will visit places saved by direct action and analyse wider political questions around what makes social change.

Join the Silent Victories Bike Ride.

The ride is passing the site of the Fairmile Road protest against the completion of the A30. Were you there? We are particularly looking for people with memories of the A30 protests to join the ride and share memories, reflections and learning.

On the ride we will:
– visit beautiful places in fine company,
– learn from communities that have successfully protected their area from destruction
– support ongoing campaigns
– investigate alternatives spaces
– discuss issues and learn from each other
– go swimming and eat lots of vegan food

All welcome, to learn, teach, share and take action.

To sign up to participate please contact: silent.victories@gmail.com

Trash to the beet, Germany

During the night of 31 May 2011, despite the fence and 24-hour security, a KWS field was destroyed in Wetze, Germany. KWS is a German genetic engineering company; the field trial was genetically modified beet H7-1, resistant to the herbicide Round-Up.

We have destroyed this field to directly attack an industry that makes us dependent on plant and animal patents. This is only possible in a capitalist system, in which new technologies are not created for need, but to maximize profit and to obtain power.

We see this action not only as an action against genetically engineered crops, but against the entire capitalist order.

This system – with its various implications and manifestations – is vulnerable on many levels with many resources …

400 peasants, clowns, and reapers liberate Belgian GM potato field

The “battle of the potato” field in Wetterem, near Ghent, Belgium, was a resounding victory for anti-GM activists on Sunday (29 May) as members of a crowd of around 400 people broke through police lines and barbed wire fences to destroy an experimental Genetically Modified potato crop.

Genetic modification of food crops is currently banned in the French-speaking Wallonia region of Belgium, and in the Brussels area, but the regional government of Flanders had given the go-ahead for this trial planting. People from across Belgium and further afield, including many “faucheurs volontaires” (volunteer reapers) from the established French anti-GM farming movement, came together under the banner of the “Field Liberation Movement” to put the experiment to an end.

The day started with setting up of a farmer’s market and communal kitchen in a sympathetic field across the motorway from the target site. There were briefings, discussions, infostalls, and some interaction with members of a “Save Our Science” counter demo by GM supporters, who came to argue their case that only more agribusiness supercrops can save the hungry of the world from crises of poverty and malnutrition. At 2pm the crowd started moving, led by a big international samba band, across the motorway footbridge to the field of destiny on the other side. The organisers had called for “non-violence” and not to provoke the cops, and the crowd was colourful, noisy, with small children and grown-up clowns in abundance. Truly Luddite in spirit (in all positive sense of that maligned term) it had the flavour of a peasants’ revolt confronting the high-tech forces of empire. Around 50 Flemish robocops waited, batons in hand, surrounding the field (only about the size of a basketball court), which was also ringed by sturdy fences topped with barbed wire, cameras and motion sensors.

As the sun broke through the clouds at 3pm a siren sounded and the action was underway. About half the crowd hopped the first low fence into the intervening meadow and ran towards the experimental enclosure. It was soon clear that the police were outnumbered, with many gaps in their lines through which protesters swarmed. (A major local football match may certainly have helped the protestors here.) The fencing was tough and attempts to pull it down with ropes proved unsuccessful. But it wasn’t high enough to keep out climbers who carried strips of carpet to get over the barbed wire. Once inside the compound the security measures then worked to the reapers’ advantage as the cops could only clamber after them, too late to stop potatoes flying everywhere. Organic seeding potatoes were hurled by others from outside the fence to replace the modified strain.

There were around 15 arrests, all those who had made it inside the compound were stuck and worthily sacrificed themselves to the law in the best pacifistic tradition. The police then had to dig a tunnel under the fence to get them out again, and they were immediately released after giving ID details. It is not clear yet what charges will be brought, but the consortium behind the field, which includes the university of Ghent, threatens to sue for damages. There were quite a few injuries including hospitalisations from barbed wire cuts and truncheon blows.

To quote from the Field Liberation Movement’s press release: “To sum up, the day of action was very successful. This action points out three paths to follow: the “peasant market” offered a platform for farmers with a real alternative, the demonstration gave the public the occasion to show solidarity with this campaign, and the action of civil disobedience effectively liberated a public space. The debate is now open. From today, biotechnology has to demonstrate that its research is in the service of an agricultural model which is sustainable, ecological, and just.”

http://fieldliberation.wordpress.com

anti-GM action Belgian call out

Call out and other nice posters can be found at:
http://fieldliberation.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/new-posters/

anti-GM action at Tesco Belfast

Gathering Momentum for the fight against biotech in our food chain

Tesco Metro, on Belfast?s Royal Avenue, had its labelling improved by anti-GM protestors on Saturday morning (23rd April). The additional labels warned consumers about the potential Genetically Modified content of meat and dairy products in store.

Gathering Momentum for the fight against biotech in our food chain

GM produce has been thoroughly rejected by the general public – however, it is still entering our food chain and being sold in shops across the UK. Dairy and meat products on our shelves today have been produced using GM animal feeds. There are no measures in place to trace these products, there is no labelling to warn consumers – none!

The protestors surreptitiously stickered dozens of meat and dairy
products, then (less surreptitiously) donned white bio-hazard suits, handed out leaflets and talked to shoppers in the aisles. This riled the somewhat irksome security guard, who helped the protestors safely find their way to the exits. (Perhaps he was a little tetchy following the successful fire-bombing of a Tesco Metro in Bristol on Thursday night??).

This simple and easy protest action reminds us that the GM issue has not gone away. Monsanto and other agri-business corporations want to own our stomachs. We need to be aware of which food products are made using Genetic Modification so that we can avoid them ? with no legislation to warn of GM animal feeds, we are vulnerable to consuming food that is potentially (seriously) harmful.