RAPE ALARM (schnews.org.uk issue 555)

Despite the market in organic food growing
at an unprecedented 30% per year,
the Government and its agri-corporate chums are
ignoring public opinion and signalling their intent to
get their Genetically Modified paradise by hook
or by crook.
The first wave of GM crop trials were trashed
en masse by anti-GM campaigners,
and supermarkets were forced to distance themselves
from GM food due to strong public pressure.
Even the Govt's own experts claimed that GM
farming and its related pesticides would
devastate the flora and fauna in rural areas.
Eventually they reluctantly staged a climbdown and
issued a moriatomim on further GM until at least
2008 (See SchNEWS 445, 448).
Now the Government have announced
proposals of just how they will mix GM and
non-GM crops should they be able to swing the EU
consultation on GM going on at the moment
(something they're working hard on behind the
scenes). They've also decided just how pure
organic food needs to be: allowing for 0.9% GM
contamination of nearby "organic" crops.
On top of this, a recent call to protect rural
families by banning the spraying of pesticides
in five-metre buffer rones around farm fields
was... rejected.
This all follows the discovery of a
'superweed', the result of GM oilseed rape
cross-breeding with a common weed in farm scale
trials, making a genetically modified new breed
of charlock, previously thought to be safe from
mutation. This version of the common weed,
found alongside oilseed rape in the UK and
mainland Europe, is resistant to the weed killer
used in the GM trial and confirmed as
containing the gene inserted info the GM oilseed rape.
IfGM oilseed rape was grown commercially,
herbicide-resistant weeds could become
wide spread. Farmers would [hen have to use more
and more damaging toxins to get rid of them,
with all ihe associated knock-on effects on the
environmental.
Without Ihe slightest hint of irony,
The Minister for Environment said that new trials were
necessary to establish independent evidence,
because otherwise, "we ... leave ourselves open
to pressure from commercial companies,
for example, and we are not going to bow to that."
The governments position on GM clearly
demonstrates its ongoing commintment to the
War on Terra, For more see www.pan-uk.org

www.foe.co.uk