Poland applies for GM opt-out as Conservatives’ leader calls Scotland’s GM-free good food policy ‘vote-chasing’

Scottish Farmer’s News Editor, Gordon Davidson, reports that Scottish Conservatives’ leader Ruth Davidson, during First Minister’s Questions at Holyrood, said that the SNP’s stance against GM crops (August 2015) “does nothing to enhance Scotland’s long-standing reputation for scientific creativity”.

She challenged the First Minister to publish all the advice and evidence she had received on the issue, to prove that it was based on more than “polling and focus grouping”.

“This is not just about GM crops – this is about her approach to government,” said Ms Davidson. “It’s vote-chasing, political calculation – it’s not science, not industry and not jobs . . . The Royal Society of Edinburgh has published its highly critical paper on the decision, and rightly points out it wasn’t based on scientific evidence and could place Scottish businesses at a competitive disadvantage”. During the agriculture debate in Holyrood last week, Scottish Conservative rural affairs spokesman Alex Fergusson said:

“Richard Lochhead talks about protecting the ‘purity’ and ‘quality’ of Scottish produce by banning the growing of GM crops and therefore denying the potential to be able to grow those same crops without the use of chemical pesticides and fungicides that are in such common use today”.

He fails to mention that additional pesticide applications are needed in some GM crops as insects become resistant – and herbicides are needed in USA to kill the ‘superweeds’ that have developed resistance to glyphosate herbicide used on GM crops by Monsanto.

Below: the dishonest but widely propagated myth, equating traditional plant-to-plant cross breeding with the GM practices of combining genetic material across species – plant/animal/bacteria/virus.

“Plant and animal breeding and cross breeding has been going on since time immemorial, and GM technology is simply an extension of that science . . . ,” insisted Mr Fergusson.

The dishonest but widely propagated myth that GM technology is essential to ‘feed the world’

“It has the potential to provide an exciting new future for agriculture – of which the principle purpose must always be to feed an ever-increasing world population” – not so according to many authorities, including UNEP, FOE, Nature Biotechnology, Indian analyst and the Organic Research Centre.

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Jadwiga Lopata and Julian Rose (below) send news from Poland’s Ministry of the Environment

Confirmation has been received from Poland’s Ministry of the Environment that Poland has sent a letter confirming its intention of applying to the European Commission in Brussels for 8 GM opt-outs, covering all varieties of GM maize developed for use in agriculture, in accordance with Clause 17 of the recent legislation.

The Association for a GMO Free Poland and the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside prompted the Polish government to act on the GMO opt out clause – application deadline, October 3rd 2015.

So far Germany, France, Greece, Latvia, Austria, Croatia, Northern Ireland and Greece have applied for the GM opt-out. Poland will be the ninth Country to take this position.

Sir Julian Rose, ICPPC President, said: The nation has a proud record of fine farmhouse foods that purvey health and welfare to millions of citizens. For this record to be maintained, GM crops must be prohibited from being cultivated on Polish soils”. Jadwiga Lopata, ICPPC Founder/Vice President, said: “Seventy five percent of Polish citizens have consistently said ‘NO to GMO!’ Government is duty bound to act on such a conclusive voice in favour
of banning GMO.

“This opt-out presents an opportunity to stand up for the independent sovereignty of Poland as a GMO Free nation. It is critical that the Polish Parliament makes a clear act banning GMO in Poland”.

 

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Then, one day, some shocking news comes across the airwaves of the world . . .

 Extracted from ‘The Future Is the Farmer’*

Julian Rose, who actively defends small farming in Poland and England form agroindustrial practices, including GM, writes:

The foundations of the supermarket society upon which our regular shopper’s aspirations depend – is predicated upon a continuous and uninterrupted increase in the acquisition of wealth. It soon becomes apparent however, that the material source of this wealth is not infinite, but finite; and that callously extracting these finite materials as though they were infinite does much damage to the fabric of the planet and brings much pollution to its vital arteries. So much so in fact, that by the beginning of the twenty first century, alarm bells have been ringing on an almost daily basis, warning of an unprecedented crisis lurking just around the corner – unless substantial remedial action is taken.

This farmer must pay the price for other’s insistence on living in the profit driven, fossil fuelled fast lane of unsuppressed greed. A lane that ultimately leads to global ecocide. He will not be approached by those who depend upon the ‘quality control’ technicians whose role it is to scrutinize the sanitised products which line the supermarket shelves.

Future shock . . .

Then, one day, some shocking news comes across the airwaves of the world. News that the majority of foods on sale in shops and supermarkets are unsafe to eat. That they are the cause of multiple sicknesses and unprecedented rates of cancer and heart disease. Epidemics are also spreading round the world that can no longer be controlled by conventional medicines and which the compromised human immune system is now too weak to fully resist.

A few days later it is admitted that normal resources of water have become largely undrinkable due to high levels of pesticides and hormones which have heavily polluted the rivers and streams that run through the desert-like, agrichemical soaked monocultural farms, whose produce still lines the supermarket shelves.

In hundreds of cities and towns, panic breaks out. People desperately seek advice as to what to do and where to purchase safe foods. The big chain stores try to reassure their customers and the mainstream media calls for people to be calm and listen to the advice of government. But the story is out and the old platitudes cease to have the desired affect.

Chaotic scenes become widespread as people become engaged in panicked attempts to stockpile what they hope are ‘safe foods’. However, the truth is that no one knows what foods are safe or not safe. What water is pure or polluted. What storekeepers are honest or lying. No one had ever thought that anything like this could ever happen; so preoccupied were they with their materialistic concerns, consumer preferences and nine to five jobs. It never occurred to them that they could be collectively complicit in triggering a global crisis of unprecedented proportions.

Not long after this announcement is aired, a group of people nervously gather outside our farmer’s house. A woman with two young children knock tentatively on the door, while some of the others are more openly agitated and even threatening.

The farmer comes slowly to the door and opens it. “What do you want?”

“I want to know if you can sell us any safe food. “My children are hungry and someone in the village said that on your farm the food is still not poisoned,” the woman replied.

The farmer stands silent for a while. Others shout out “We need safe food!” Eventually he turns to his wife “Well” she says, “You had better let them in.”

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*The full five-page text may be read here.

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“Government does not represent the will of the people. It is in the pocket of corporate gangsters”: vested interests try to impose GM crops – 2

These are the fiery words of Julian Rose, opposing GM crops in England and Poland, as he addresses protesting Polish farmers – see the background here.

Read more on this website: http://political-cleanup.org/?p=6434

An appeal from Poland

Just as the latest post on the Chemical Industry website said today, the drive to promote GM technology is not due to any desire to feed the world’s poor or improve the natural environment but by Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer’s desire for ever-increasing profit. We would add to these names a whole set of multinationals who profit from the processing and import/export of food.

Minutes after posting this we received a message from International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside (ICPPC), calling for international support to a growing farmers demo… now in 4 cities in Poland.

ICPPC writes, “They have been on the street for three weeks and the government is trying to manipulate them to give up. We need international support to help them keep going!

Food producers are protesting because:

• Polish farm land is being sold to foreign multinationals through the exploitation of a loophole in the law. Farmers are rightly angry and are blocking the roads and admin centres associated with this scam.

• Their right to sell their food locally and to grow GM-free crops is threatened.

The ICPPC, the Solidarity trade union, the nurses union, the farmers chamber and the bee keepers association are forming a united front able and willing to take-on the government and the corporations and to force a total ban of GM trading and planting.

Julian Rose and Jadwiga Lopata opening a 2006 IPCCP Krakow conference

After two years’ hard campaigning, in 2006 all Polish provinces (local government) had declared themselves as GMO-free and the Polish government passed an act which prohibited the use of GMO seeds and plants in agriculture.

But the Polish government is now trying to pass a correction to the GMO act which would allow the use of GMO seeds in so called ‘designated GMO areas’

However, vested interest rallied, funding intensive pro-GMO propaganda on all levels: for academics (students and scientists), for farmers, politicians and consumers, paying for pro-GMO articles, organizing meetings and trainings where they distribute free materials — of course all saying how good GMO is. The Polish government is now trying to pass a correction to the GMO act which would allow the use of GMO seeds in so called ‘designated GMO areas’.

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Please send letters of support to the farmers via:

ICPPC – International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside,
34-146 Stryszów 156, Poland tel./fax +48 33 8797114 biuro@icppc.pl
www.icppc.pl www.gmo.icppc.pl www.eko-cel.pl

MPs should stand by their decisions

Julian Rose writes:

Imagine the outcry in the House of Commons if the Commons restaurants and bars only served genetically modified food – and announced this on a notice!

In the past others have suggested that decision-makers should live with their decisions and that:

• nuclear waste storage, which is said to be so safe, has a depot located in the Commons basement

• MPs, their families and advisers live in houses near similarly ‘safe’ and desirable incinerators and the quiet, scenic HS2 route.

• MPs, their families and advisers use public education, transport and health provision.

That would focus their minds admirably.

 

Comment on the last post: EU approval for GM maize feed

Julian Rose writes:

Just another GM tool to ensure that the food chain becomes irredeemably polluted by foreign genetic materials. As Professor Bruce Lipton has pointed out: ingested GM tainted foods are changing our DNA and passing on into all our cells. The micro RNA of food is picked up by the digestive system and does not break-down. From there it affects the reproductive cells of the organism.

The rapid rise of infertility in US citizens could well stem from the fact that approx 90% of maize and soya is genetically modified in the US and many other common foods are following the same route. Added to which, the fact that there is no labelling, means citizens have no basis upon which to choose to avoid GM foods other than growing their own or buying certified organic.

The dependence of UK/European livestock farmers upon imported protein feed-stuffs is a dangerous game – even without the GM factor. With the added GM component it becomes a high risk strategy which should be an illicit one.