On 27th May at Rothamsted, Harpenden, Hertsfordshire, more than 400 growers, bakers and families from across England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France and Belgium marched against the return of open air GM field testing. Take the Flour Back linked arms with their European counterparts, notably France’s Volunteer Reapers and walked calmly towards the field of GM wheat before being stopped by police lines.
From the newswire: European activists link up to draw the line against GM| Final details| Take the Flour Back defend Direct Action on Newsnight| Open letter to Rothamsted| What is food sovereignty| Pull up the GM wheat, or we will, say growers| Meet-up point announced| Callout
From SchNEWS: If we stay there will be stubble|One man assault on GM crop trial in Hertfordshire|Flour to the people
Links: Take the flour back
Kate Bell from Take the Flour Back stated that: “In the past, kids, grannies, and everyone in between has decontaminated GM trial sites together. Here at the beginning of a new resistance to this obsolete technology, we see GM hidden behind a fortress. We wanted to do the responsible thing and remove the threat of GM contamination, sadly it wasn’t possible to do that effectively today. However, we stand arm in arm with farmers and growers from around the world, who are prepared to risk their freedom to stop the imposition of GM crops.”
Gathuru Mburu, co-ordinator of the African Biodiversity Network, spoke on the global fight for control of our food supply. Mburu explained that: “Experimenting with staple crops is a serious threat to food security. Our resilience comes from diversity, not the monocultures of GM. Beneath the rhetoric that GM is the key to feeding a hungry world, there is a very different story – a story of control and profit. The fact is that we need a diversity of genetic traits in food crops in order to survive worsening climates. Above all, people need to have control over their seeds.”
Due to massive public opposition and resistance, GM crops have never been grown commercially in the UK. But field trials have started again, and once again we need to build a movement to defend our land and food.
Comments
Hide the following 8 comments
Obscurantism
17.06.2012 11:41
Fucking peasants
David
Educate yourself
18.06.2012 11:21
It's not obscurantism, if anything the GM companies are the ones doing the obscuring. Ever notice anything that said 'contains GM ingredients'? Neither have I.
Do some research. Here's a start
http://www.foe.co.uk/groups/cheltenham/535.htm
http://www.gmfreeze.org/
Jeremy
frustrating
22.06.2012 14:26
I would have swallowed my disappointment and kept quiet about this, if it hadn't been highlighted as an important action here.
Shh..
clever
23.06.2012 09:23
Lol! Excellent!
Your arrogance is only outdone by your stupidity. Perhaps - they didn't want to get past the cops into the crops. Perhaps they WANTED to sit on their arses and sing songs.
In short: Perhaps they didn't want to do what you wanted them to do.
lightbulb moment
frustrating
23.06.2012 22:56
woodstring
frustrated too, but...
24.06.2012 00:53
I think the situation was confused by an injunction against named individuals that would in theory make them responsible for others' actions, by a bunch of French anti-GM people who though that was the best thing to do and quickly formed up to make the front rows, not giving others time to form up, etc, and also as you said, some of the speakers at the end.
It was advertised as a day of action, and that was what was intended. (lightbulb moment - you're talking bollocks)
I was frustrated, but we also have to face the reality (as caught up on TV later) that past that line of cops were FUCK loads more, cops on horses, on quad bikes, cameras up cherry-pickers, security, big fat anti-cut fence etc etc. In other words, NO FUCKING CHANCE to get through to the crop.
I'm afraid I have my doubts about your 'safe route'. I do know that a couple of people got nicked for entering the marked applied for 'trespassory assembly' zone. If you want to do something useful, go to the guides at https://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/resources#GMtrash
anti-GM
true, more cops behind
26.06.2012 07:57
As to the extra cops behind, the writer is correct - there WERE plenty more of them, but since when has that not been the case? I never assumed we'd all get on site and I'm not arrogant enough to think I'd have achieved that myself, but at least I and many others I spoke to beforehand, were up for trying hard and keeping enough of them busy to enable those who could, to get inside.
As I said, I'm trying to be philosophical that was just the way things turned out and wouldn't have bothered commenting except that I want new activists to know this isn't the way every effing protest has to end up.
Shh...
hang on a minute
30.06.2012 11:45
The singers have a right to obstruct in the same way you do.
If i wanted to protest about your planned wrecking of the field, that would be my right.
hypocrasy