Kindling accompanied Greater Manchester growers and campaigners to the Stop GM (Genetic Modification) Rally in Norwich on Saturday 23rd July.
A decade ago anti-GM mass action dealt a series of blows to the biotech industry, resulting in the removal of GM from all supermarket own brands as well as the major brands as consumers and farmers roundly rejected the technology. While the last few years have not seen any field scale trials of GM crops the biotechnology industry has not been dormant, rather it's been changing tactics, sharpening its PR drive and focused on new GM products.
For the past 10 years the Sainsbury Laboratory at the John Innes Centre in Norwich have been researching GM technology to provide blight resistance in potatoes, so far they have been unsuccessful. Meanwhile a number of conventionally bred blight resistant potatoes have been developed which are already available on the market - such as the impressive Sarpo varieties developed by Savari Research Trust in North Wales. It's interesting to note that while the GM trails have received substantial public funding, the Savari trials have received no support what-so-ever.
The group: Stop GM organised the rally to oppose the continued use of public money to develop technology that is not only unpopular (all previous GM crops that have been granted a UK license have been abandoned due to lack of market) but also unnecessary. Some coverage of the day can be found here: ITN, BBC, Farmer Weekly.
The following day (Sunday) was taken up with a de-brief and planning future campaigns. It was an opportunity for us 'newies' to listen to and learn from scientific experts, farmers and campaigners. For example, we looked at strategies for confronting the current PR surrounding GM technology as the solution to world hunger and climate change.
It was also an opportunity for the Manchester contingent to explore its options and its likely a new Manchester anti-GM group has been kindled.
One issue that particularly struck a cord with the Manchester group was the use of Genetically Modified oil by caterers, who often don't label or inform its customers as is required by law. The group was keen to find out if this was happening in Manchester's thriving take-away sector and to alert small businesses to the potential consequences of not labelling products.
For more information about GM oil used in take-aways see Friends of the Earth's briefing: Get unlabelled GM ingredients out of your local restaurants:
"Although public opposition has largely kept GM off shop shelves, GM oil is being widely sold and used throughout the UK, marketed as ‘pure vegetable oil’ with GM labelling in very small print. Failure to let customers know about GM ingredients can result in a fine of up to £20,000, but investigations in some areas by Trading Standards officers have shown that this isn’t stopping the use of unlabelled GM.
In Norfolk, officers visited 50 catering establishments and found that over 40% of them were using either vegetable oil or mayonnaise which contained oil from genetically modified soya beans.In York a similar investigation revealed that a quarter caterers visited were using GM cooking oil, but that 94% of them were not letting their customers know about it."