Skip Nav | Home | Mobile | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Security | Support Us

World

CropScience v GeneWatch - York's "great GM Debate"

c & york imc | 17.07.2003 22:29 | Bio-technology | Ecology | Globalisation | Technology | World

As the - how far removed? - camps debated their postions about GM...
The "non-governmental" organisation's "GM? Debate" rolled into York. Genewatch and Bayer did the lead-in...
An interesting meeting ensued... [report from imc-york's e-mail list]

Does progress means 'contamination, irreversibility and corporate control'? It's a 'great benefit to farmers'?

* about 100 turned up
* started off with Cllr. Andrew Waller [of the new Lib Dem lead council] doing a 'show of hands' survey: "Do you feel you know a lot about GM?" and "Do you have a strong opinion about GM?" which revealed fairly clearly that the gathering consisted of 'the usual suspects' in the main.
* Speakers were Dr Julian Little of Bayer CropScience (what do these companies have against the humble space bar?) and Dr Sue Mayer of Genewatch.

Sue Mayer ran through all the various micro- and macro-scale arguments against GM and gave useful examples, but her strongest point was one she made at the beginning and again at the end, in a sense overarching all her other points: that we now know that we need to do 'something different' with our farming - and does GM fit into with 'doing something different'? It comes from a system which has created intensification. It can be difficult to say no to PROGRESS but if we don't say it now, we certainly won't have the chance to say it later. She essentially stressed the precautionary principle: that it is the wrong thing at the moment, under the circumstances it is being offered, not necessarily that it is wrong for all time. One particular circumstance which makes it wrong at the moment was that no system of liability for environmental damage or cross-contamination has been worked out, and efforts to do so have been strenuously resisted by the industry.

Then Dr Little (nice man, unassuming) spoke: he didn't come from the 'GM as panacea for all humanity's ills and just the same as what we have always done' camp. However, he said that wherever GM has been tried it has been shown to have great benefits to farmers, and gave the great increase in uptake of GM in developing countries as evidence that it is good, an argument I have never really understood, given the trading relationships that operate in many developing countries. He pointed out that much of the increase has been in China, by its government, rather than by companies.

A point for the cynics who think this whole exercise is a farce is that the farm-scale trials will not be complete until September, by which time the public debate will be long over.

Questions: 6 anti, 1 pro, 1 neutral. Contamination, irreversibility and corporate control were the main topics.
We then worked in groups to come up with 3 main issues, 3 main risks, 3 main benefits. Same issues emerged as the main concerns actually.


AND A JOLLY GOOD TIME WAS HAD BY ALL!

c & york imc
- e-mail: imc-york@lists.indymedia.org
- Homepage: http://lists.indymedia.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/imc-york

Comments

Display the following comment

  1. debate?! — anti auntie

Publish

Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

/regional publish include --> /regional search include -->

World Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Server Appeal Radio Page Video Page Indymedia Cinema Offline Newsheet

secure Encrypted Page

You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.

If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech