Bayer Come a Cropper

This is a great victory. Yet another step to a GM free world. But Bayer is not pulling out of GM just yet - they are for example applying for permission to import GM rice into the EU - threatening not only the livelihood of farmers in Asia but also that of rice growers in Spain and Italy. (see press release here  http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=22995)

Bayer is also working on making their GM oilseed rape more "environmentally friendly", presumably in the hope that it would then get approval.

Wiht the commercial growing within the UK it all depends on what sort of regulations the government puts into place regarding cross-contamination between GM and non-GM crops and compensation for farmers.

Here is Bayer's own press release

 http://www.press.bayer.com/news/news.nsf/id/AD3947F5E4DB42BCC1256E670063C0B9?Open&ccm=010005000&l=EN

SO celebrate, but don't drop your guard and KEEP PUSHING!

Six years ago a multi billion-dollar industry assumed it could walk into our food and fields and take control of our agriculture. Instead GM has been revealed, routed and, for a few years at least, pretty much defeated, by a national determination to stand our ground.

We should all be proud of ourselves, we’ve changed the world.

But it really isn't over till the obese female warbles. We have to sort out the last backdoor of GM into Britain- the animal feed industry. Supermarkets like Sainsbury’s continue to use thousands of tonnes of imported GM soya to feed the cows that produce their milk and diary products. This market for GM has already devastated places like Argentina, and is rapidly doing serious damage in Brazil, where the horrific social, cultural and ecological problems of growing GM are being felt NOW. Unless we stop this market then we are not only complicit in their suffering, but also loose an unprecedented opportunity to bugger the market for GM in the UK, and ensure it doesn't come back to haunt us in four or five years time.

British agriculture, dairy farming in particular, is already in crisis. If we don't get behind farmers now, and demand GM free feed and an increase in the milk price for producers, then we will loose our landscape to buy outs by huge corporate farms, with or without the presence of GM. There is already a new and seriously exciting alliance of activists and farmers forming to finish the job off. Get behind it.

Because after all, we know we can win.

Nice One on the Victory over Bayer ! However I have to seriously question the wisdom of forming an alliance with dairy farmers. This is already an intensive and chemically dependent form of agriculture as well as being a totally unecessary one. This smacks of Greenpeaces "Don't eat me until I'm GM free campaign". We have to take a stance against all industrialized agriculture, GM is merely the tip of an iceberg. Why try and cerate any more of agap between the Animal liberation and radical ecological movements in this country than already exists ?

Nice One on the Victory over Bayer. I totally agree that now is the time to push this issue further and to make sure that there is no come back from this for bayer Crop Science in the U.K. But ( refering to the concolidator) why should we as activists taking a stance against industrialized agriculture support dairy farmers? So dairy farmings in crisis , So fucking what? Surely this is something to celebrate not moan about. GM is just the tip of the iceberg of industrialized agriculture. This smacks of Greenpeace's "Don't eat me until I'm GM free" campaign a one pronged non-assault on battery farming. Don't drive any more wedges between the Animal liberation and radical environmental movements than already exist.

It's true that conditions in mechanised daries are a disgrace. Personally, I can do without dairy, but it does not seem to me that the majority of the UK will. Giving Dairy farmers a decent price for their produce, is at worst neutral in terms of cows welfare. If dairies are bought out by big business, which is the way it is heading at the moment, the industry will only intesify and animal welfare suffer yet further.

Our current landscape and it's diversity is dependent on the bioregional farming practices which have given us local food security for centuries. Of course it's vital to move away from animal exploitation and towards new ways of farming, preferably vegan based permaculture ones. But you don't achieve that by allowing small independent farmers to be shafted, and setting them up as the enemy. What the GM campaign has shown strongly for the first time is that the market and producers will respond to customer demand, but only if a monopoly doesn't already exist. If we don't act now to support family farms, we'll have an unbiddable monopoly on our hands. I live in a dairy area, and I hear the cows calling for their calfs when they're taken for slaughter at three days old, and I hate it. But I also see the real suffering and desperation among ordinary working farmers, the suicide rates are staggering and horrific. I've seen and the countryside becomeing an extended horse pen for the urban rich, and the creation of agricultural deserts when big farm conglomerates move in, and I hate that too.

If we work together we can find solutions together. If we loose the land to multinationals we will have no choices. It's that simple and that complicated.

Why the fuck isnt the Bilston Glen link on here?
The campaigners stand to lose their homes and a piece of land they have fought, fucked, and bled on, if the road that Bayer is funding, goes ahead!
The campaign has already made PPL Therapeutics(DOLLY THE SHEEP) go bust, but Bayer has bought them out.
This is the ONLY occupation of land with strict buissness interests for Bayer in the UK.
Why then has Indymedia chosen to overlook the protesters?
Fuck knows but here is the address:

http//www.bilstonglen-abs.org.uk/

AND HER SISTER-SITE:

http//www.roadalert.org.uk/

Hello Greg .. whats this about bayer financing the road through ancient woodlands at Bilston, I didn't know anything about this.
I checked the link to the bilston site but couldn't find anything expect a link to some official bayer site.
Is their any proof that bayer are behind this road building scheme .. err like documents links ect.

please post any links here or mail to  CBGnetwork@aol.com

thanx

I heard that it wasn't a spanner but a torqur rench!!!

Bayer were in partnership with PPL, but they pulled out a while ago...there is no indication that their is any current/future involvement...get your facts straight before you rant!!

Indymedia is made up of everyone who posts. If there is no link, post on as a comment to a relevant article, get in touch with features or chat in the IRC to get things added.

Indymedia is your media too. Don't rant - do!

Crops passed by other EU competent authorities, like the Belgians who caving in to Bayer pressure on oilseed rape, will be legally cultivatable in the UK. They won't be recommended, as they won't be on the UK seed list, but will be on the EU Common Catalogue, hence there legality for planting here.

The argument put forward for why this don't matter is that UK farmers just won't plant stuff that isn't on the UK list, as these 'off list' varieties have no UK testing and track record.

Yeah, right.

Picture the scene. Farmer Giles Hickk-B'stard, who has grown trials of GM OSR every year he can, loves GM and really hates tree hugging, lefty, anti-capitalist soap dodgers, is given a tidy incentive to plant this new EU listed crop - say, oooh, GM OSR - by a certain BioTech company. So are a few of his like minded mates. All with the hidden agenda of developing the most cross contamination of the UK conventional OSR crop, and of any wild species or organic brassica crops too, if possible. Especially considering we produce very little seed for planting in the UK.

Oh dear, very sorry, shame we never sorted out that liability stuff isn't it? Still, no reason why we can't plant it every where now, eh? You'll thank us in ten years when the starving are but a distant memory, your all rich and our new BioTech Reich is getting
into the stride of it's first Millennium.

Ein Samen, eine Feldfruch, Ein Bayer!

Not that I'm a conspiracy theorist. Just don't take your eye off the ball just yet. Or ever, actually.