Delivering the answer to GM spuds in Norwich

Sat­ur­day 23rd July saw grow­ers and sup­port­ers from all over the UK and beyond descend on Nor­wich to help deliv­er 40 box­es of organ­ic blight-resis­tant pota­toes to the Sains­bury Lab­o­ra­to­ry to high­light the re-emer­gence of open-air field test­ing, and the £1.7 mil­lion of pub­lic mon­ey being spent in the hunt for a GM blight-res

Sat­ur­day 23rd July saw grow­ers and sup­port­ers from all over the UK and beyond descend on Nor­wich to help deliv­er 40 box­es of organ­ic blight-resis­tant pota­toes to the Sains­bury Lab­o­ra­to­ry to high­light the re-emer­gence of open-air field test­ing, and the £1.7 mil­lion of pub­lic mon­ey being spent in the hunt for a GM blight-resis­tant spud. Folk came from Wales, France, Lon­don, Devon, Lan­cast­er, Man­ches­ter, Dorset, Liv­er­pool, Bris­tol, York­shire, Bun­gay and Nor­wich itself. You can see pho­tos of the event by click­ing on http://www.flickr.com/photos/chickenpea111/sets/72157627303039592/
Back­ing from celebri­ty food­ie Anto­nio Car­luc­cio, com­bined with grass­roots organ­is­ing and the sheer absur­di­ty of the GM research, meant that the event got exten­sive press cov­er­age (see the links below).

Most of the speech­es were con­duct­ed in the city cen­tre, next to the farm­ers’ mar­ket, and fea­tured the head of pol­i­cy at the Soil Asso­ci­a­tion, the Direc­tor of GM Freeze and a selec­tion of farm­ers, who explained why GM is a risky, expen­sive and out­dat­ed tech­nol­o­gy, which is still fail­ing to deliv­er com­mer­cial crops of any ben­e­fit to farm­ers or con­sumers. Peter Lund­gren, a con­ven­tion­al farmer from Lin­colnshire, described the ongo­ing research as “flog­ging a dead horse”. “Why are we throw­ing good mon­ey after bad when we already have six vari­eties of blight resis­tant pota­toes in the mar­ket­place avail­able for grow­ers? The GM indus­try makes a great effort to sug­gest that exist­ing vari­eties don’t taste good.” “Look” he said, point­ing to the chil­dren in the crowd tuck­ing into hot blight-resis­tant pota­toes being served by the local Green­house café. “That’s the real test.” The crowd of grow­ers, coun­cil­lors, senior cit­i­zens and kids then head­ed out to the John Innes Cen­tre to deliv­er the organ­ic spuds under the watch­ful gaze of sev­er­al vans of riot cops and a police heli­copter.

Prof. Jonathan Jones (or JJ to us…) Field notes from close quar­ters.

The most unusu­al aspect of the demo which fol­lowed was the inti­mate approach adopt­ed by the Sains­bury’s lab researchers. Nor­mal­ly indus­try sci­en­tists are more than coy about engag­ing with crit­ics. Stop GM attempt­ed to organ­ise a stan­dard pub­lic debate in Bramham near Leeds Uni­ver­si­ty a cou­ple of months ago. The vil­lage is next to the only oth­er open-air tri­al site in the coun­try at Leeds Uni­ver­si­ty, but Prof. Atkin­son refused to attend, say­ing that he did­n’t believe adver­sar­i­al debates inform the pub­lic.

Up until 6 days before the Nor­wich ral­ly Jones was issu­ing threats against any­one attempt­ing to make a deliv­ery to his door and refus­ing our offer of a mod­est plat­form. So it was curi­ous that JJ brought not only a small army of secu­ri­ty, but also what appeared to be a not insignif­i­cant part of his research team, his PA, and his wife to the par­ty out­side the Sains­bury Lab gates, who all min­gled with the crowd and attempt­ed to engage in a vari­ety of ways. Jones gave us some use­ful insights into what to expect from the indus­try when cor­nered. The intro to his speech actu­al­ly includ­ed a sub­stan­tial ‘I used to sub­scribe to the Ecol­o­gist in the 70’s you know’ sec­tion. He also talked a lot about the sup­port he had from local farm­ers, none of whom were actu­al­ly in atten­dance, and he didn’t acknowl­edge viable alter­na­tives to GM, oth­er than to say that the pota­toes that had been deliv­ered were “not pop­u­lar with con­sumers” (Unlike, say, GM foods — the only prod­uct ever to be uni­ver­sal­ly banned by super­mar­kets from their own lines in response to mass con­sumer oppo­si­tion). He attempt­ed through­out to paint him­self as a cham­pi­on of impar­tial pub­lic sci­ence ded­i­cat­ed to reduc­ing chem­i­cal use, reduc­ing car­bon emis­sions and feed­ing the world. This from a man who’s oth­er day job is that of co-founder of Mendel Bio-tech­nol­o­gy. This is tak­en from their web­site: “Mendel is ded­i­cat­ed to being a pre­mier biotech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny serv­ing large agri­cul­tur­al com­pa­nies with new genet­ic and chem­i­cal solu­tions and to becom­ing the lead­ing seed com­pa­ny serv­ing the bioen­er­gy indus­try.” Those chem­i­cal solu­tions and large agri­cul­tur­al com­pa­nies he so care­ful­ly aligned him­self against in Sat­ur­day’s speech? Mendel has three strate­gic part­ners: Mon­san­to (the largest), BP and Bay­er Crop Sci­ence.

JJ defend­ing his Mon­san­to links in the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/18/gm-scientist-defends-monsanto-links

For more on Jones and his com­mer­cial bio-tech and lob­by group links see: http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Jonathan_Jones

Jones is also on the board of direc­tors of the ISAAA, a GM indus­try lob­by group.
ISAAA’s annu­al review of GM crops is often used to pro­mote the tech­nol­o­gy, as no one else is putting sim­i­lar data out.

The ral­ly was fol­lowed by some fine shapes being thrown around the camp­fire at the excel­lent after-par­ty, and day of grass­roots organ­is­ing where we gath­ered inspi­ra­tion from our amaz­ing French friends and fur­ther evolved cam­paign ideas start­ed at Gath­er­ing Momen­tum in Jan­u­ary. Watch out for our stall and work­shops at the Green Gath­er­ing in Chep­stow this week­end. Drop in and say hel­lo if you’re pass­ing. For more infor­ma­tion about non-GM blight-resis­tant pota­toes see www.savari-trust.org

A sum­ma­ry of some of the news cov­er­age-

TV -

ITN : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REZwCEZqoSU&feature=player_embedded
BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-14277147
Radio: BBC Nor­folk:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p00hxv3f

Press –

http://www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/2011/07/25/127998/Campaigners-protest-against-GM-spuds.htm

http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/health/anti_gm_protesters_descend_on_john_innes_centre_in_norwich_1_972864

http://www.newmarketjournal.co.uk/news/regional/protesters_meet_gm_crop_scientists_1_2896750http://www.southnorwichnews.co.uk/news/rally-heads-for-research-park/

http://www.farmersguardian.com/home/latest-news/norwich-protest-over-gm-potatoes/40434.article

JJ also got a pre-emp­tive piece in the on-line Guardian. For those who aren’t aware, the Guardian has start­ed receiv­ing Gates Foun­da­tion fund­ing. The Microsoft billionaire’s fond­ness for biotech appears to have ren­dered sev­er­al pre­vi­ous­ly impar­tial organ­i­sa­tions slight­ly blink­ered in their engage­ment with GM issues. Whilst some of the media cov­er­age is undoubt­ed­ly unbal­anced, the Sains­bury lab­o­ra­to­ry do a lot of PR any­way, and this ral­ly is the first time in many years that they have been forced to defend rather than just pro­mote their work. At their site they seem to have expend­ed a fair bit of ener­gy in defence as well, with a con­ve­nient con­t­a­m­i­na­tion con­tain­ing ‘tent’ over the tri­al site, and earth bar­ri­cades at every entrance.

The cam­paign con­tin­ues — come and get involved. Con­tact info@stopgm.org.uk