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1,000 GMO-FREE ZONES ON EARTH DAY 2005
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See our main GM-free zones page for event details. This page provides guidelines for participants, together with resources for media organisations, information on how to provide financial support become a sponsor, contact details, and background information.
See also our list of community contacts for your County.
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GUIDELINES FOR PARTICIPANTS
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Get your official GMO-free zone sign now
Please display an official GMO-free zone sign to declare your area, land, farm, stud farm, restaurant, hotel, B&B, pub, retail outlet or home GMO-free on 22 April.
A sign with the caption Keep Ireland GMO-free is also available.
Photos, price list and order form are available at www.gmfreeireland.org/sign.
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Put yourself on the GM-free Ireland map
The GM-free Ireland Network is now building a map and database to register and display the location of all Counties, town councils, conventional and organic farms and other areas North and South of the border which want to secure legal protection from any contamination and liability resulting from GMO animal feed, seeds, trees, crops, livestock and fish. The first edition of the map will be revealed at a national media briefing at the Convergence Festival in Dublin on 22 April 2005. The deadline to register for this first edition of the map in 15 March 2005. Preview our map and register now.
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Declare your farm or premises GM-free at 2pm on 22 April, Earth Day 2005
Having first registered your location on the map, please declare your farm or premises GMO-free by displaying your official GMO-free zone sign at 2pm on 22 April, Earth Day, when an expected 1,000 other participants will simultaneously do the same across the country. Please wait until this date so that we can leverage the international media attention which Earth Day normally generates in order to focus public awareness on Ireland's desire to remain GMO-free.
Please let us know of your plans as soon as possible by sending an email to declare@gmfreeireland.org or by calling us on (0404) 43 885.
Please also inform your County Council, media, hotels, restaurants, pubs, retailers, schools, friends and neighbours.
Organise a local event / press conference / celebration in your area
We have compiled a list of local community contacts in every County in Ireland whom you might consider inviting to participate.
We can provide flyers, organising tips, a promotional DVD, leaflets, posters, stickers, a draft press release, and possible media coverage upon request.
Ask GM-free Ireland member organisations and other people and groups (including farmers, food companies, retailers, chefs, restaurants and NGOs) to join forces by co-hosting local events in your area. Ideally these should include one major focal event in your County. Invite celebrities, musicians, artists, street theatre groups, friends and neighbours. Ask Macra na Feirme, IFA, GAA and ICWA to help. Inform your County Council, media, hotels, restaurants, pubs, retailers, health food stores, schools, and churches. Consider organising a lunch or dinner gathering at a local restaurant which belongs to the Restaurants Association of Ireland and/or whose chef is a member Euro-Toques Ireland, to start the process of networking with interested parties in your County. Think of innovative symbolic ways to involve the politicians, people and business organisations in your community, and celebrate!
If you want to participate or co-ordinate such an event, please contact us at this address and get in touch with representatives our member organisations who may be willing to co-host a local event in your area – including An Taisce, Euro-Toques Ireland / the European Commission of Chefs, Food Writers Guild, Forest Friends Ireland, Friends of the Earth Ireland, Friends of the Irish Environment, Irish Association of Health Stores, Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association, Irish Doctors Environmental Association, Irish Farmers Markets, Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association, Irish Seed Savers Association, Irish Wildlife Trust, Leitrim Organic Farmers Coop, Organic Trust, Peatland Conservation Council, Restaurants Association of Ireland, and Slow Food Ireland.
Use the promotional materials available on the GM-free Ireland web site
Our GMO-free zone signs are available now. We aim to add downloadable leaflets, participant information packs, media kits, and a draft press release in the weeks ahead. If we can secure donations, we would like to provide GMO-free zone banners, bumper stickers and buttons. See http://www.gmfreeireland.org/zones for details.
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Be informed
A genetically modified organism (GMO) is a plant, animal or micro-organism whose genetic code has been altered in order to give it characteristics that is does not naturally have. GMOs normally include a combination of DNA from viruses and bacteria together with DNA from other plants and/or animals. These infect the modified organism with completely novel combinations of genes, proteins and allergens whose long-term health and ecological impacts are scientifically impossible to predict. Scientific evidence shows that GMO seeds and crops are genetically unstable, have led to massive crop failures, create superweeds, and can never be recalled after their release. Insurance companies refuse to cover the risks.
GMO seeds and crops are normally patented by transnational agri-biotech corporations like Monsanto, which charge farmers an annual licensing fee to grow their GM seeds. Monsanto typically requires farmers to sign onerous contracts which prohibit them from saving and replanting the GM seeds, oblige them to waive their human right to freedom of speech (e.g. by talking to the media) if anything goes wrong, and waive their right to sue the biotech company if the crops fail to perform as expected. Monsanto has filed hundreds of patent infringement lawsuits against farmers whose fields have been contaminated by GMOs, bribed governments to legalise their products, and trespassed on farmers premises to check for unauthorised use of their GM crops.
GMOs inevitably contaminate conventional and organic farms as a result of wind-borne pollen drift, seed dispersal by insects, animals and humans, and by the process of horizontal gene transfer through which transgenic DNA is carried across species boundaries by microbial organisms. This creates superweeds, reduces biodiversity and threatens human, animal and plant health by releasing new allergens and genes for pesticide production and antibiotic resistance that could spread to humans, crops, livestock and wildlife including bees and other beneficial insects.
The introduction of GMO animal feed, seeds, crops anywhere on this island – whether through deliberate legal release or contamination – would give transnational agri-biotech companies like Monsanto patented ownership of Irish farmers' seeds and crops. They would burden farmers and food producers with more red tape, restrict our access to EU export markets, and ruin our reputation as Ireland - the food island.
Faced with almost total market rejection of GM food and crops in Europe, the agri-biotech companies have resorted to political pressure, bribery, suppression of science, cover-ups, strategic contamination, propaganda and lies to try to their products legalised, and have infiltrated EC, UK and Irish governments, regulatory bodies, universities, and the media with people who make false claim that there is no scientific evidence of GMO health and environmental risks - like Bush and Blair's false claims of weapons of mass destruction. This gives science a bad name.
You do not have to be a rocket scientist to understand why GMO crops are inherently dangerous, but we advise you to take an hour or two to read up on the subject in order to be able to refute the biotech myths that GMO crops are good for farmers, will alleviate poverty, end world hunger and cause the blind to see. The spin doctors will be out to get you, so be informed! Background information and links may be found at the end of this message. More information is available on the GM free Ireland web site at http://www.gmfreeireland.org
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RESOURCES FOR MEDIA ORGANISATIONS
GM-free Ireland can provide you with maps of all GMO-free zones in Ireland, local event details, guest speakers, broadcast footage and transcripts of exclusive interviews with leading international experts on GM issues. For more information visit www.gmfreeireland.org, email media@gmfreeireland.org or call us on (0404) 43 885.
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FINANCIAL SUPPORT
The GM-free Ireland Network welcomes cash donations and in-kind contribution of goods and services to make our Earth Day event a success. Please call Michael O'Callaghan on (0404) 43 885 if you can help in any way. Top of our wish list is a printing company that would be willing to donate the cost of promotional materials. We would also welcome free advertising space in newspapers, radio and TV.
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SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITY
The GM-free Ireland / Earth Day / Convergence event provides an historic opportunity for any socially-responsible company or institution seeking to position itself as an Irish safe food leader before an audience of progressive farmers, food producers, and discerning consumers across the island of Ireland, with a national launch event at the Convergence Festival, related local events in every county in Ireland, and a tie-in to Earth Day 2005. Benefits include your name and logo on promotional video / DVD, advertisements, posters, media kit, press releases, flyers, and web site – and a prominent role in the national and local launch events on Earth Day 2005.
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PERSON TO CONTACT
Michael O'Callaghan, GM-free Ireland Network, Little Alders, Knockrath, Co. Wicklow.
Tel (0404) 43 885 ï mobile: 087 799 4761 ï email: mail@gmfreeireland.org www.gmfreeireland.org
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BACKGROUND INFORMATION
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Assembly of European Regions: http://www.a-e-r.org
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Berlin Declaration: www.gmfreeireland.org/downloads/Petition GMO free zones.pdf
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Convergence Festival / Sustainable Ireland: www.sustainable.ie
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Earth Day Network: www.earthday.net
Earth Day was launched in 1970 and has been held every year since then on 22 April. It is by far the world's largest environmental celebration - involving over 5,000 groups in 150 countries in 2004. We chose this date for our launch event so as to leverage Earth Day's world-wide media attention to build public awareness of GM issues both nationally and locally in Ireland.
Earth Day, which began in 1970, is now celebrated by millions of people worldwide. This year is its 35th anniversary, and around the world, hundreds of thousands of nongovernmental organizations, governments, teachers, and faith-based groups, among others, are making plans to declare that they are part of something extraordinary: a worldwide movement to protect our planet, our children, and our future.
This year, Earth Day Network's theme is Protecting Our Children's Health and Our Future. Despite the extraordinary and often false obstacles that we face in our efforts to protect our natural resources and our biodiversity, few will dare argue with the moral imperative to protect our children from harm. As a consequence of that imperative, we call on governments, corporations, faith-based organizations, and all people in our troubled world to work with us to ensure that children everywhere are healthy, educated, and free from oppression.
This Earth Day, hundreds of major events will take place around the world, in communities large and small, in classrooms, in parks and on beaches, in places of worship. From Kiev to Beijing, from India to Romania, from Africa to the Americas, we will demonstrate our diversity and our resilience. The Earth Day Network looks forward to your participation and working with you to make this Earth Day the beginning of a global effort to protect our children's future.
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European Conference on GMO free Regions, Biodiversity and Rural Development:
http://sos.k42.org/conference
This conference, organised during the International Green Week (22-23 January 2005) in Berlin, heard that with over 100 regional and 3,500 sub-regional areas now declaring themselves GMO-free, it was time for European law to be changed to protect such areas from the cultivation of GM crops. 200 delegates from GMO free regions and from 30 European countries called on the European institutions to protect conventional and organic seeds from GMO contamination, to establish the regions right to stay GMO-free and to give them a say in the approval process of GMOs, which they find scientifically questionable and not based on the precautionary principle. Benedikt Haerlin, conference organiser from GENET and the German-based Foundation on Future Farming said: "There is fast growing and unstoppable movement against the cultivation of genetically modified crops all over Europe. A new alliance of local and regional authorities, nature protection agencies and farmers unions with environmental and consumer organizations has emerged to defend their freedom of choice and the self-determination of the regions."
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European NGO Network on Genetic Engineering: http://www.genet-info.org
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Forging a GM Policy for Ireland workshop
Proceedings of the workshop held on 26 April 2004: www.gmfreeireland.org/events/workshop1/index.php
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Friends of the Earth Europe: www.genet-info.org
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Foundation on Future Farming: http://sos.k42.org/conference/Foundation.html
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GM-free Ireland Network: www.gmfreeireland.org/network
GM-free Ireland is a community of individuals and 53 organisations representing over 30,000 farmers, foresters, food producers / distributors / exporters, chefs, restaurants, NGOs, professional associations, doctors, economists, lawyers, journalists, students, and consumers.
Our knowledge of the agricultural, economic, health, environmental, political, and security aspects of GMOs is informed by the expertise of our international partners, our member organisations, and by leading scientists, farming bodies, consumer groups, government agencies, NGOs and politicians around the world. We are a member of the European NGO Network on Genetic Engineering, and an official Community of Slow Food Ireland.
We provide background information and policy briefings on GM issues, engage in Government consultations on the so-called ìco-existenceî of GMO crops with conventional and organic farming, and are developing a related map registry of farms and other areas which require legal protection from GM contamination. We are preparing a video / DVD / information pack for stakeholders, and provide GMO-free zone signs for local authorities, farmers, food producers, restaurants, hotels, B&Bs, schools, and retailers who wish to remain GMO-free. We supply broadcast quality video interviews and can arrange presentations by leading experts on GM issues.
Membership is free of charge and open to all individuals, farmers, businesses, and Non Governmental Organisations (north and south of the border) who want to keep Ireland GM-free.
We welcome farmers, seed traders, animal feed distributors, food producers and retailers, hotels, restaurants, and stud farms who cannot yet guarantee their produce completely GM-free, so long as they aspire to do so.
As Margaret Mead said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world".
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GM-free Ireland interviews:
John Heney,
Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association: www.gmfreeireland.org/interviews/heney.php
Benedikt Haerlin,
Foundation on Future Farming:
www.gmfreeireland.org/interviews/haerlin.php
Agnes Ciccarone,
Assembly of European Regions:
www.gmfreeireland.org/interviews/ciccarone.php
Maria Gracia Mammucini,
Regional Government of Tuscany:
www.gmfreeireland.org/interviews/mammucini.php
Bernward Geier,
International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements:
www.gmfreeireland.org/interviews/geier.php
Helena Norberg Hodge,
International Society for Ecology and Culture:
www.gmfreeireland.org/interviews/norberg-hodge.php
Jack Wafula,
Sustainable Mobilisation of Agricultural Resource Technologies Initiative, Kenya:
www.gmfreeireland.org/interviews/wafula.php
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GMO-free Europe: www.gmofree-europe.org
Includes a clickable map of all the GMO-free regions in Europe.
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Ireland's role as biotech stooge:
In 1997, Fianna Fail issued a policy statement promising never to allow GMO crops in Ireland. But following a White House luncheon with US National Security Adviser Sandy Berger on St. Patrick's Day 1998, Bertie Ahern has actively supported the biotech industry's efforts to force GM food and crops into Europe against the wishes of 70% of consumers and the majority of Member States. Ireland has never voted against legalising GM crops in the European Parliament.
In 2002, EU Joint Research Centre CEO Dr. Barry McSweeney was accused by Greenpeace of trying to suppress the publication of the Scenarios for Co-existence report which found that GM crops inevitably contaminate conventional and organic crops and may cause 40% higher production costs for EU farmers. Mary Harney appointed McSweeney, a former Director of BioResearch Ireland and Biocon Biochemicals, to the new post of Chief Scientific Officer of Ireland in 2004.
Former EC Health and Consumer Affairs Commissioner David Byrne placed the first GMO crops on the European Common Catalogue of Seeds against the wishes of the majority of Member States before leaving office in December 2004. Food Safety Authority of Ireland CEO Dr. John O'Brien is also a former Director of the International Life Sciences Institute, a Washington-based biotech & tobacco industry front group which infiltrated scientific committees of the World Health Organisation and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in order to downgrade tobacco health warnings and downplay the evidence that high levels of sugar in junk foods cause childhood obesity and diabetes. Monsanto Ireland managing director Dr. Patrick O'Reilly told the Royal Irish Academy that it doesn't matter that GM crops would inevitably contaminate Irish farmers and put organic farmers out of business.
Why does the Irish Times repeatedly deny the evidence of GM health and environmental risks? Irish Times Trust chairman and TCD Genetics professor David McConnell is Co-chair of EAGLES (European Action on Global Life Sciences, an agri-biotech lobby group. Despite opposition by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland has authorised the sale of GM animal feed and food. The Department of Trade and Enterprise has authorised 82 GMO patents. The Department of Agriculture's consultation procedure for a National Strategy on the "co-existence" of GMO crops excludes 80% of the stakeholders and fails to comply with the Aarhus Convention laws on public participation.
This government's fundamentalist pro-GM role will condemn future generations to a perpetual biological colonialism with no possibility of liberation. The only way to prevent this government-led disaster is to deal with it now before it happens.
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No market for GM foods in Europe:
In January 2005, Greenpeace published a detailed report showing that the EU market for GM labelled food products is virtually closed. Europe's top 30 retailers and top 30 food & drink producers have policies and non-GM commitments which reveal a massive international food industry rejection of GM ingredients. This cuts across the industry from food and drink manufacturers to retailers, and includes everything from snacks and ready meals to pet food and beer. The combined total food and drink sales of the 49 companies with a stated non-GM policy in their main market or throughout the EU (27 retailers and 22 food and drink producers) amounts to §646 billion, more than 60% of the total §1,069 billion European food and drink sales. Irish food companies doing business internationally need to implement a non-GM policy without delay.
Download report (2MB PDF file): www.gmfreeireland.org/downloads/NoMarketForGMFood.pdf
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The Prince of Wales' address to the Terra Madre conference:
www.gmfreeireland.org/interviews/charles.php
Excerpt: "I believe it is both legitimate and important to ask whether some people's faith in the potential of GM farming and other new technologies is a product of wishful thinking or of the hype generated by vested interests. In the long term, are these methods really going to solve mankind's problems, or just create new ones? And how will we regulate them effectively? There are a great many examples of earlier well-meaning attempts to control pests or improve the environment which have gone drastically wrong. I am simply not convinced that we have absorbed the lesson, which is that manipulating nature is, at best, an uncertain business. So even if we discount the potential for disaster, there is still the question of whether this is the right direction to take. If all the money invested in agricultural biotechnology over the last fifteen years had been invested in developing and disseminating genuinely sustainable techniques – those that work with, rather than against the grain of nature – I believe we would have seen extraordinary and genuinely sustainable progress."
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Slow Food Ireland: www.slowfoodireland.com
Slow Food was founded in Italy 1986 by the eminent Italian food critic and journalist Carlo Petrini. The international movement was launched in Paris in 1989.
Slow Food aims are first and foremost to educate people about this wonderful culinary resource in the face of the over-commercialisation and homogenisation of our food.
Through education, and what Petrini termed the eco-gastronomic intervention, Slow seeks to conserve endangered seed, breed, cultivar, and process. This scenario is exemplified in the following anecdote: up at the top of a Tuscan valley, there are only two eighty-year old men remaining who know how to make the local sausage, a delicacy based upon a similarly endangered breed of a hardy little red cow. The Slow intervention involves the enlistment of young people to learn the sausage-making technique; incentives for local farmers to breed and expand the shrinking herd of the rare cow; the recording of the production parameters; and assistance in seeking a wider, lucrative market, enabling the product to become self-sustaining, redounding to the benefit of consumers who are guaranteed access to the once-endangered food, the producers and the wider local socio-economy.
Hence, Slow Food is an idea and a belief; the idea is that by celebrating the magnificent foods that are under threat from standardisation, bureaucratic hygienism, and commercialisation, we can ensure that these products continue to be made and, having the future of these foods, we are then able to enjoy them! One of the key tenets of Slow Food is the belief in the right to pleasure!
Slow Food international www.slowfood.com is organised in small, local groups. These are called ëConvivium' from the Latin "Con" (with) and "Vivere" (live) ‚ the emphasis of the name indicates the convivial nature of the activities of these groups.
With 80,000 members and 800 Convivia Chapters in forty-eight countries, National Slow structures are springing up around the world, celebrating local traditions as diverse as llama jerky and traditional sushi. Slow Ireland is bringing together a dynamic grouping of enthusiastic producers and entrepreneurs with an appreciative consumer base to grow and encourage Irish artisan foods. There is much current excitement at the prospects for Slow growth in Ireland, this being recently enhanced by the partnership which has been formed with Febvre Wines of Sandyford, whose mission and philosophy of sourcing rarer artisan wines mirrors the intentions of Slow.
Slow Food Ireland Convivia
These are the important local or regional chapters of Slow, a forum for members to gather and share real food and wine, engage in awareness raising about food-related issues, and support local producers. In Ireland, there are Slow Food convivia centred in Dublin, Howth, Dun Laoghaire/Wicklow, Tipperary, South East, East Cork, West Cork and Kerry, with many more planned north and south.
Slow Food Ireland Presidia
Rounding out these various branches of Slow functions are the Presidia, the important support structures which gather about a chosen food. The Presidia's task, through the creation of a Presidia Protocol, is to:
• Identify and describe the food;
• Verify the authenticity of the food's ingredients;
• Define the parameters of the production process;
• Ascertain the means by which the food's ingredients and the habitat of production is perpetually sustainable;
• Cultivate an environment of celebration around the enjoyment of the produce;
• Advise on marketing channels to vouch safe both the widespread enjoyment of the product as well as the socio-economy of the producer's guild.
Ireland's first Presidia include Wild Smoked Salmon, Raw Milk Cheese and the Kerry Cow, and it is hoped that many more Irish Presidia will be formed to focus support and attention on endangered indigenous produce.
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Warning from GMO-contaminated farmer Percy Schmeiser:
www.gmfreeireland.org/interview/schmeiser.php
Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser faced a million dollar patent infringement lawsuit by Monsanto after his farm became contaminated by their GMO oilseed rape in 1996. He said "Monsanto wants total control of the seed supply, which ultimately would give them total control of the food supply. Any farmer could wake up tomorrow morning and no longer own or be allowed to use his seeds or plants... There is no such thing as "co-existence"! GMOs will destroy conventional and organic farmers because of cross-pollination and contamination. Farmers in Ireland should not allow GMOs in, because once you do there is no calling it back! I guarantee if you introduce them today they will be all over your country within four or five years!"
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