Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Countering the GM come back summer camp

Stop GM | 04.07.2011 11:16 | Bio-technology | Ecology | Health | Sheffield

Bring your stove and tent for an anti-GM weekend. Fri 22nd pm: Camping available. Sat 23rd: Delivering a trailer load of organic spuds to the doors of the John Innes Centre in protest at GM potato trials there. Sun 24th: a day-long planning session: GM is coming back – we’ll be ready. See below for more information.

Spud reaper
Spud reaper


The Spuds Don't Work rally
The Forum, Norwich, 12 noon, Saturday 23rd July
British trials of genetically modified blight resistant spuds have been failing for the last ten years. But a conventionally bred variety of blight resistant potato has been available for 3 years. So why are we still paying for this dangerous experiment?

Come ride with us on the back of a trailer load of safe effective spuds as we go to deliver them to the Sainsbury Laboratory outside Norwich. It's one of only two possible open air trials for GM crops in Britain this year. Yet despite being publicly funded, it's so secretive no one will even say if it's been planted. Join us for tunes, chips and good cheer as we go and show them that we have already got the answers they say they're looking for.
Practical details
Meet at the Forum in Norwich City Centre at 12 noon for free chips and fun. We will set off from there to the John Innes Research Centre by bike, tractor and coach at 1pm. Bring waterproofs and umbrellas! If you would like to travel from town to the John Innes Centre by coach or if you want help finding accommodation (camping or otherwise) get in touch as soon as you can, and by Friday 15th July at the latest. Contact  info@stopgm.org.uk
Camping
Camping is available at the Norfolk Showground on the 22nd and 23rd July. Camping will be in the Red Car Park (note the Country Music Festival is taking part in the main showground). There will be access to toilets and drinking water. Arrive after 4pm on Friday 22nd. Red car park is to the east of the Park and Ride.
Bus: you can catch the Costessey Park and Ride to the Park and Ride itself (Mon-Fri). This service takes 20 mins and runs approx. every 20 mins from the bus station running via the university. Alternatively catch Konnect bus 4 from the bus station and ask for the Showground. This service runs approx. every 25 minutes. Buses run regularly between the train and bus station in Norwich.
Countering the GM come back summer camp
Sunday 24th July, 2011
A day long camp to get productive and plan the next stages of the campaign. Camping spaces available from Friday afternoon. Come equipped with a stove and food for self-catering. The site is five minutes from a regular bus route to the city centre. Contact  info@stopgm.org.uk as soon as possible and by Friday 15th July at the latest to let us know you want camping spaces reserved for you.
What we need...
...for both events...
You, and the people you know, and anyone you think might be interested.

This project is being worked on by Stop GM in conjunction with the Genetic Engineering Network. Several experienced grassroots campaigners will be working on the project from now until the event, but we need help getting the word out. If you think you could help by distributing email information about the event, dropping it about in any social media you may be involved in, letting your local growing projects or social justice groups know, distributing our 'Little Red Tractor and the Quest of the GM-free Spuds' leaflet or even organizing a coach to attend from your area, we'd love to hear from you.
For more information phone 07595 506673 or email  info@stopgm.org.uk. Visit www.stopgm.org.uk for more background information on GM and campaigning against it in general.

A tale of two spuds...
For the last 10 years, researchers at the Sainsbury laboratory at the John Innes Centre in Norwich have spent 1.7 million pounds of public money failing to develop a genetically modified potato resistant to the fungal disease blight. This project is so secretive and unaccountable that the laboratory has refused to even confirm if a trial has been planted this season, or if they've been forced to abandon any hopes of making the technology work. Public rejection of the risks associated with eating genetically modified food means that even if the engineering involved was successful, there would be no market for the crop.

Meanwhile, 3 years ago a small Welsh research charity dedicated to conventional breeding techniques developed a spud that is spectacularly resistant to blight. Not only does the crop pose no threat to health, the environment, or neighbouring farmers; it works. Over 6 different varieties are now available, and being grown on a commercial scale.
The rationale
The campaign against GM crops ten years ago was so successful that GM almost completely vanished from our fields and supermarkets, and many people have forgotten the issues associated with the technology. But in many other parts of the world peasant farmers have been desperately fighting its spread, and laws are changing in Europe that would make it much easier for GM to be grown in Britain. Despite pre-election promises to the contrary the coalition claims it intends to be 'the most pro GM this country has ever seen'.

Let's call time on an outmoded technology that continues to waste money in failing projects, while simultaneously threatening the very science that's actually producing working alternatives quickly and cheaply. For too long the biotech companies have gone unchallenged in their claims that GM can
create genuinely useful crops when in fact all the significant advancements in the last decade have come through conventional breeding.
With the renewed threat of GM on the horizon campaigners need to get together again to show the rest of the country (and each other) that we're still here, and we've got an even better case than ever. This is a chance to take the initiative with the media, to tell a story which explains clearly and practically why the pro GM lobby is wrong. That it's us, and not the corporations that have the answers to the food crisis.

For more information please check this briefing written to help people object to the proposed field trial of GM  http://www.gmfreeze.org/publications/briefings/99/ and how to get hold of the solution www.sarvari-trust.org.

Stop GM
- e-mail: info@stopgm.org.uk
- Homepage: www.stopgm.org.uk

Additions

Final details for the weekend

21.07.2011 13:53



Preparations are going well for the Spuds don't work rally and Camp against the Come Back. As I type, the spuds (local,
organic, blight free - the spuds that do work) are being dug from the ground, and by Saturday they will be sizzling in the pan ready to feed you chips. The media may not be everyone's chosen game, but it is interesting to note that both ITN and the BBC have been in touch wanting pre-recorded television interviews, suggetsing they see this trial, and GM in general, as very much live issues again.

On a more practical note, here is some of the information we think you will need if you are coming.

What to bring:
* Camping things, including your own food, cooking things and plates etc. We will be able to make cups of tea for the Sunday but try to BRING YOUR OWN MUG even if you aren't camping
* Banners, placards, flags, umbrellas with slogans on, costumes, musical instruments and other items to make the rally a carnival.
* Your bike, if you can. There will be the option of getting a public bus or getting a lift in a vehicle from the centre of town to the John Innes Centre where the research is happening, but lots of us will be using bikes to get there under our own steam.

Speakers:

* Helena Paul from Econexus as compere
* Peter Riley, campaign director, GM Freeze
* Emma Hockridge, head of policy at the Soil Association
* Gerald Miles, organic farmer from GM Free Cymru
* Brian Baxter, local organic farmer
* Peter Lungdren, co-founder of FARM and small-scale conventional farmer
* Representatives from the Faucheurs Volontaires: a group who 'de-contaminate' GM trial sites in France

* Jonathon Jones from the Sainsbury Laboratory: a senior scientist responsible for this trial will come out to explain what he is doing and answer your questions.

Camping and Travel
* There will be camping at the Norfolk Showground - turn up any time from 4 o'clock on Friday. Camping will be in the Red Car Park (note the Country Music Festival is taking part in the main showground). A map of the Showground is available
here  http://stopgm.org.uk/attachments/article/70/Norfolk%20Showground%20Map.pdf Red car park is to the east of the Park and Ride.
* Bus to and from the campsite: you can catch the Costessey Park and Ride to the Park and Ride itself (Mon-Fri). This service takes 20 mins and runs approx. every 20 mins from the bus station running via the university. Alternatively catch Konnect bus 4 from the bus station and ask for the Showground. This service runs approx. every 25 minutes. Buses
run regularly between the train and bus station in Norwich.
* If you are planning to take the bus in between the Forum and the John Innes Centre then you want the 3, 4 or 24 from the bus station. Get off at Colney Lane.

See you very soon!

The Stop GM Crew

Stop GM


Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All 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
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
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.

Global IMC Network


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