GM-FREE WALES:
FARMERS, ENVIRONMENTALISTS AND POLITICANS JOIN FORCES
(2,381 words, slightly edited for clarity):
Introduction by Michael O'Callaghan:
A few months ago, I received an email from Professor Robin Grove-White of Lancaster University in the UK, who is a member of the Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission (AEBC), one of the bodies whose opinion is legally required for the formulation of British policy on GM issues. He had just returned from a Commission briefing in Belfast about co-existence issues in the North of Ireland. That briefing was also attended by two delegates from the Republic, one from the Department of Agriculture and one from the Department of the Environment. And he said the reason he emailed me was "it's extraordinary, your country is actively trying to legalise this stuff all over the EU; but we were not impressed by the Irish government delegates' lack of awareness on the issues, and by Ireland's complete lack of any statutory rules to deal with GM co-existence and contamination of conventional and organic farmers, and by the lack of any provisions for liability and compensation". That really shocked me and made me realize the need to do something and start a discussion.
So I'm really delighted that Chris Samra-Tibbets is here with us from GM-free Cymry, because they are way ahead of us. They are one of the many European regions which are now GM-free. So thank you for coming!
Chris Samra-Tibbetts:
OK. Hello. Right, well we've done an awful lot in Wales as you can imagine, but I've only got ten minutes so I'm just going to focus on how we successfully fought a GM maize trial which many of us feared was an unwinnable battle, and then tell you how we've gone on to ensure that Wales remains GM-free. And I hope some of our experiences will be helpful for you.
So, it was almost exactly three years ago in Mathry, near Fishguard, when we learned that there was going to be a GM maize trial. The community consultation which was supposed to have happened was virtually non-existent. There had been no public meetings, nothing. At that time there was little resistance or support from other parts of the UK, and we only had six weeks before planting was due to begin.
A group of us - farmers, environmentalists and scientists - organised a local meeting. The turnout was fantastic: it was in a little village hall and we couldn't get everybody in! As a result of that, we were clearly given a mandate to go ahead and try and do something. We recognized that, as Ruaidhri said, it is really important to involve all sections of the community - not just organic farmers but traditional farmers as well, not just your activists who go out there on a demo, but somebody who would never go on a demo but who would bake a cake for a fund-raising event. We needed to involve everybody. Those who were totally opposed to GM, as well as those who still had an open mind. So we had a very open brief.
We also chose to work in a non-hierarchical way. We had no formal committee, no-one in charge. We were there to support everybody who wanted to do something, to motivate them to do whatever they felt was appropriate. By working in this way, we achieved an awful lot in those six short weeks. We had people organizing petitions, demonstrations, we had a tractor run by farmers, a bicycle rally, fund-raising events, socials. Scientists came to address meetings to explain to local people what GM is about, because so many people really had no idea.
We recognized that good communication would be vital to keep all our supporters informed of all the things that were going on. So we produced newsletters, we set up an internet link - really important. Use the internet, we couldn't have done it without it. We also got the support of our local media, newspapers and radio, and they were great as well. They publicized all our events. If we let them know, they publicized them.
As the time got closer to possible planting, we set up a 24 hour vigil of the field. We had enough people to keep a watch 24 hours a day, and we also had a telephone network so that if they did turn up to start planting, we could alert hundreds of people really quickly.
We lobbied politicians, environmental and wildlife organizations, any organization that we felt could help. A group went to London to meet the Environment Minister, to complain about the lack of consultation process and outline our concerns about GM. The people who went found he was not aware that that consultation process hadn't happened as it should have done. He also didn't know things like that bees can carry pollen for 9 miles and cross-contaminate. We were quite amazed at how little he knew. Others of us met with the landowners and with Aventis, the company that was going to carry out the trial - an interesting but not very fruitful meeting. We began to get inside information. People would phone us up - sometimes they wouldn't tell us their names - to tell us the GM seed had arrived and where it was being stored. And most interestingly, we found out that they hadn't got a seed drill to plant the GM seed. So gentle pressure was put on the seed drill contractors: they were told they would be extremely unpopular if they provided a seed drill for the GM planting. So they didn't get a seed drill! And at last, at the 10th hour, they withdrew, citing community pressure. It was so great: we won!
But then we realized we had only won a battle, we hadn't won the war. We wanted the whole of Wales GM-free, and the UK if possible.
So that's when we became GM-free Cymru. Up to then we hadn't even had time to decide what we were going to be called. We also got ourselves a logo, a little red flower. Now how we got that is interesting because it outlines how we like to work. We've never had a lot of funding. What we did was go to the local paper and ask them to run a children's competition. We wrote something about GM and what GM-free Cymru was about in child-friendly language, and asked children to design us a logo. From the entries we got, this one stood out above all the others. It was designed by a five-year old boy. We got one of our supporters who was a graphic designer to do whatever you do to turn a drawing into a logo and computerize it. Then we got in touch with the little boy's school and asked if we could give him his prize there. So we went along to the school with a local artist who again was one of our supporters. She presented him with a book she had illustrated. We gave a talk to the children about GM. We got the local paper down to take photographs. We got more publicity in the paper.
That's how we work. We involve, we educate, we get as much publicity as we can. And we did that all for free, OK?
Right, so over the last three years, what's happened? Well, we've learnt an awful lot about running a campaign. We learnt that you have to keep it focused on a very wide range of issues. You have to keep up-to-date with scientific evidence, which is emerging all the time from all around the world - all the stuff about superweeds, contamination, the effect on health. You need to do this to counteract the lies - they are lies - that come out from the biotech companies. That GM is safe: they don't know that, that's not proven. That it's needed to feed the world: that's not true; there's one and a half times the amount of food the world needs, it's just not distributed properly.
Politicians - even those who support us - are not well informed about the science. We found that they really didn't know an awful lot and that they valued our input. Similarly with the media; they don't know a lot, they need input. We also needed to counteract the myth that is expounded, that scientists are all pro-GM and it's only us environmentalists and Luddites that are against it. That's not true either. The emergence of the International Science Panel [], a group of scientists opposed to GM, has been very helpful. Make good use of them, they can provide you with a lots of information and counteract that myth.
Farming issues: you must focus on those. Farmers need to understand the scientific arguments, they also need to understand issues like liability and separation distances, which will be dealt with by my colleague [Tom Latter].
We also had to develop skills in understanding political and legal issues. Initially, the Welsh Assembly was very uncertain that it had the political power to act independently of the UK Government and the EU. They just said, we can't. But with scientific information from us and legal opinion from Friends of the Earth, the Welsh Assembly has successfully stood alone and joined Wales with nine other European regions who have declared their own intention to remain GM-free. Wales was the first to do this in the UK. Recently the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and the South West of England have followed our lead, and many local Councils are choosing to go GM-free.
As well, if you are going to be successful, you have to focus on consumer and ethical issues as you have heard from the last speaker, and you also have to let people know about big business' attempts to control the food supply and patent life forms.
We found that working in alliances with other organizations has proved really effective. For example, in Wales we work with an alliance that includes the Farmers Union of Wales (which unlike the NFU is totally opposed to GM), with the National Federation of Womens' Institutes (which has thousands of members who are opposed), with Friends of the Earth, lots of smaller organizations, and us. This alliance represents thousands of people, thousands of consumers, thousands of votes, which means we have a significant influence on supermarkets, food producers and politicians. I will also reiterate what the previous speaker said about how it is so important to keep people informed. As he said there was the GM Nation debate which showed that 96% of people who responded didn't want GM, but the most important thing it showed for us again was that the more people learned, the more information they were given - balanced, both sides, not just the biotech companies - that as long as they got both sides of the argument they became increasingly opposed to GM. The more people know, the more they are against it.
So that's the brief for you, to get information out. Have we done it? Well, we've used the media, newsletters, internet, web sites. If you set anything up, get people's email and snail mail addresses, put them on the list and keep letting them know what's going on.
You can see our stand and our table over there with loads of leaflets, booklets, exhibition materials, promotional materials like T-shirts, Christmas cards, and bumper stickers. Go to big meetings, farmers markets, anything. Keep getting that information out as much as you can.
How do we do and fund all this? People's support, people's generosity, people's labour. That display was made for us at cost, the guy didn't charge us a penny for his time. I assure you, the support is out there.
Mind you, you are likely to have quite a battle to keep Ireland free of GM. We found the other side plays very dirty. There is lots of money and lots of commercial interest involved. But it can be done.
The recent stance of the Welsh Assembly signaled to the UK Government that it was prepared to use its veto to prevent Chardon LL maize being put on the UK National Seed List. The UK couldn't go ahead and grow this GM maize without the agreement of the Welsh Assembly. By indicating that they wouldn't go ahead with this, the Assembly successfully prevented this crop being grown anywhere in the UK for some years. As a result, Bayer has withdrawn Chardon LL. Monsanto has also recently quit the UK because of the level of resistance there.
So you can do it! Good luck, and remember - we are just across the water and just an internet click away if you want our help.
Michael O'Callaghan
Thank you very much, Chris. I think we can learn a lot from what the farmers and environmentalists and politicians in Wales have managed to do in getting together on a common issue. I hope we can do something similar here in Ireland. because this is an issue that transcends party politics, it transcends generations, and it transcends groups such as environmentalists and farmers who have often been at loggerheads, as Ruaidhri said, over issues like water pollution and so on. This is an area where we can get together. I hope that the IFA can continue to participate in this discussion with other stakeholders over the next few months and get more actively involved in the follow-up conference we are currently planning.
If you feel like doing that, Ruaidhri, I guarantee you that I will invite Pierce Brosnan to speak, because I have his phone number in my computer and he is a big environmentalist and I think he would be very happy to support that.
I want to draw your attention to one the books that Chris brought over. It's called Seeds of Deception: exposing corporate and government lies about the safety of genetically engineered food. It was just published last week I think, written by Jeffrey Smith, with a foreword by Michael Meacher who will be coming to our conference in June. By all accounts it's an absolutely fantastic book that looks at a lot of the dirty tricks that Chris alluded to: Seeds of Deception [published by Green Books, UK, 2004: tel + 44 (0)1 803 863 260, email: sales@greenbooks.co.uk].
So apropos of seeds, our next speaker, Bridget Carlin is the spokesperson for the Irish Seed Savers Association, and I give her the floor.
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