Category: South East England

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?

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.

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

*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/