Campaign for GM freee zones and regions gathers force

international | consumer issues | press release

Tuesday September 14, 2004 19:49

by Barbara Thauront - Assembly of European Regions

b.thauront at a-e-r dot org

20 Place des Halles F-67000 Strasbourg

0033388227446

Evironmentalists and regional authorities launch joint initiative

AER and FOE(Friends of the Earth launched long-term campaign that aims to protect traditional crops from consequences of the introduction of genetic technologies

PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate release

Campaign for GM free zones and regions gathers force

Environmentalists and regional authorities launch joint initiative

Strasbourg, 14 September. Today the Assembly of European Regions (AER) and Friends of the Earth Europe (FoE) have launched a joint long-term campaign that aims to protect traditional crops and products from the consequences of the introduction of new genetic technologies. Among other things the AER and FoE will lobby together for a European legal framework on the coexistence of traditional and transgenic crops, as well as for the legal recognition of GMO-free zones and regions in Europe.

The AER and FOE call for a binding EU coexistence regulation, following the example of the law that was recently adopted by the German Parliament, with a clear definition of:
- biosafety measures such as separation distances between GM and non-GM crops and a public register for GMOs;
- a liability scheme in the event that conventional and organic crops as well as their seeds are contaminated by GMOs, on the basis of the precautionary and polluter-pays principles;
- the right of Member States and regional authorities to prohibit or restrict the use or sale of GMOs within the Common market if there is evidence of an advanced risk of extensive dissemination or a negative impact on the environment;
- legal provisions enabling the regions to define all or a part of their territory as a GMO-free zone or region, without these decisions being seen as an infringement to the Community principle of free movement of goods.

Klaus Klipp, Secretary General of the Assembly of European Regions said: “Since 1999, nearly two thousand regional and local authorities across Europe have declared themselves GMO-free areas, challenging the European law on the Common market. They want to confront the risks of contamination by GMOs and to protect their traditional and organic agriculture, as well as their products of designated origin. Via this joint initiative the AER aims to have the voice of the Regions heard at the European level”.

Geert Ritsema of Friends of the Earth said: “It is clear that environmentalists and European regions have a common interest to protect biodiversity, traditional and organic agriculture against the risks of GMOs. And today the German law on coexistence give us a chance to respond properly to GMO issue at European level”.

Several Members of the European Parliament were present at today’s press conference, where the joint AER/FoE initiative was launched:

Mr. Janusz Wojciechowski, EEP, PL, Vice-President of Agriculture Committee said: “Poland and other new EU Member states want to avoid the errors that the old EU Member states made in the past in order to preserve our traditional agriculture. We may produce less than them but our food must be natural and consumer-friendly. Only such a policy can help us to uphold small farms and maintain jobs in rural areas”.

Mrs. Jillian Evans, Greens/EFA, UK, said: “What is happening at European level since the Commission lifted the moratorium is additional proof that the European Parliament, which adopted the resolution on coexistence between GM and non-GM in December 2003, has not been heard once again. We welcome the German Parliament’s step forward on the issue, which opens the way to a new approach of coexistence”.

Created in 1985, the Assembly of European Regions (AER) is a political organisation of regions in Europe and the speaker for their interests at European and international level. It currently has 250 member regions from 30 European countries and 12 interregional organisations. For further information: www.a-e-r.org Contacts: Agnès Ciccarone, AER Regional Development Committee Executive Secretary, Phone: +33 3 88 22 74 37; Email a.ciccarone@a-e-r.org or Barbara Skoczylas-Thauront, Press and Communication Manager, Phone: +33 3 88 22 74 46; Email b.thauront@a-e-r.org

Friends of the Earth is a Non Governmental Organisation and the widest European network in the field of environment protection and sustainable development They are the European branch of Friends of the Earth International, which gathers 68 national member organisations and some 5000 local associations in the world. For further information: www.foeeurope.org
FOE Europe contact:
Geert Ritsema, GMO Campaign Coordinator,
Phone: +32-2-542 0182, Mobile: +31-6-290 05 908; Email geert.ritsema@foeeurope.org

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Comments (5 of 5)

GM no-go areas?

by Freddy

Wed Sep 15, 2004 14:25

So, how do you seal off a few areas as GM-free zones? Seeds are spread by the wind and the actions of animals and birds.
So it would seem to me to be impossible to seal them off.

GM free Ireland

by observer

Wed Sep 15, 2004 09:57

Ireland has no GM free zones although a number of Council have passed motions to make their areas GM free on proposal from Sinn Féin - Newry/Armagh, Fermanagh and I think Derry City. Also SF MEPs de Brun and MacDonald were only Irish reps to oppose last week's decision to allow GM free seeds.

we need gm crops like a hole in head

by arthur

Wed Sep 15, 2004 00:14

The late Dr Feymann said of some experts that all they had to do was write a paper and they could get away with literally anything .Feyman pointed out to have knowledge required a lifetime of research and this could not be realised overnight.
Gm is only possible because there are genetic links to the distant past,nature balanced all life relative to the enviorement and adopted slowly continuing to make changes that were compatable to all natural development .what gm crops really do is circumvent thousands of years of eveloutionary history,with little knowledge as to the consequences ,uncluding possibly facing an unrectifiable disaster.
The food situation does not require gm only corporations like Monsanto .when things go wrong they blame the farmer .The world has enough problems with pathogens like bse that only natures software has any chance of rectifing.
Ireland has been importing gm by the boatload ,is stored in border regions ,spilled on country roads and probally has contaminated the einviorement already.Its time someone looked at our industrial society and questioned wheather the direction its going will be sustainable.

Ireland's not GM free

by Eoin Dubsky

Tue Sep 14, 2004 22:47

There was lots of talk about this at the last Convergence Festival, an annual event organised and hosted by Sustainable Ireland ( some info on their site about GM too: http://www.sustainable.ie/ ). A few of SI's founders cut their teeth at Ireland's first big anti-GM action in Wexford a few years back. Went to court and had an excellent trial in which they used the common law "neccesity defence" to explain the threat of releasing such poorly tested technology into the environment.

See the related link below for all things GM and anti-GM in Ireland.

Re Iraq and reconstruction... could anyone who ever (ever!) spots an Irish journalist make even an allusion to the UN sanctions when reporting the situation, or background to the situation in Iraq, please post a comment here about it. It's like they never happened.

Is Ireland a GMO free country?

by iosaf misses dunking broken biscuits one shilling and six a - bag down on Moore Street, janey Moore Street doesn't it bring the tears to your eyes?

Tue Sep 14, 2004 22:10

or does it have GMO free regions?
anyone know?

and postcard thoughts-

I live in a GMO free region. You've to go quite a few hundred kilometres before you find a GMO cultivation zone. Which is nice. Still the locals are worrying about the radioactivity now instead. Very proud of going to be a nuke free zone, only thing is all four of the old nukes leaked killing one of the "great rivers of Europe in the process". However this was all above board, and completely legal, and without such risks, the majority of people wouldn't have telly in their houses now, and running water and stuff. Stuff like tourism, and thousands of people looking for jobs coming every month and never getting to grips with the orthography of the language or nothing.

"progress".
Mr Blair seems like he just spoke to Poison Ivy about the Kyoto mistake, the weather is broken now, and we all did our best to tell them, when we the "end users" noticed our clothes weren't "bluey white" anymore when they came in off the line.

"bugs".
Has anyone noticed that all the bugs SF find in their cars, in their offices and stuff, look so terribly home made? It's like over here in indymedia ireland we have long range aucustic disturber units and stuff, and nanotech robots who fly in through your ventilation ducts and monitor your SMS traffic, and SF stills gets bugged by something from a "Boy's Own radio and transistors are fun!" kit special circa 1964.

Oh Mr Putin is going over the top. And him a former KGB officer, turning the clock back with his Patriot Act and new powers and gung-ho attitude, it's completely irresponsable and ought provoke stern reaction from our Government. There'll probably be a cold war now.

Please Please Please don't allow Dana be President. Its the sort of warped thing that the gobshites might do, elect a President Dana.

Tell me is the LUAS worth the money? Do you feel better about Dublin's planning through the Lemass years, and all that famed foresight, and "stuff" now that you've got the LUAS?

They're rioting again in Spain. Their pressie ZP met Chirac and the German man (very big, doesn't say much) and ZP declared that "old europe is made new", they're going to call themselves the "nucleus of Europe" and fight for a YES vote to their constitution. Meanwhile old europeans are fighting for their jobs against closures all around the peninsula and have taken up burning car tyres and slingshotting nuts and bolts and widgets at the police. The police have tanks now and northern ireland style barricades so none of them have been hurt.

The Americans have quite curiously said (according to the Iraqis who met the EU today) that they can't reconstruct Iraq until it's secure. And interestingly they can't secure it until it's reconstructed or at least till all those tiny little lane ways and cramped towns "on the road to Najaf" aren't there... So the Europeans will have to give them lots of money to relocate people and build a LUAS or something.

somwhere along the line, the sort of people who take forty years in giving you a LUAS after
trashing the perfectly working older version, sold GM food to our planet's high council of Wookies along the lines of-
Well man, you've to think about Climate Change, we're going to have permanent summer and drought in most of our arable land and most temperate forest burnt by oh would 2030 be scary enough?
and monsoon in the rest, you'll need new seeds for that.
No-one has yet mentioned the super freeze or multiple houricane tornado things or ocean current flip (yep just like in the movies).

Tell you something,
if you can go down Moore Street on the LUAS and buy a pineapple for less than 5 euros you're a part of this fucked planetary energy policy idiocy.

I went off the point there.
sorry. try again.
****
does anyone know if Ireland is GMO free?

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Campaign for GM freee zones and regions gathers force

Comments (5 of 5)