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1.BASF targeted in GM protest
2.Anti-GM protest shuts down BASF UK headquarters
1.BASF targeted in GM protest
By Alistair Driver
Farmers Guardian, 6 May 2008
http://www.farmersguardian.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=18260
PROTESTORS claim to have shut down BASF UK's headquarters at Cheadle Hulme, near Manchester, this morning (Tuesday, May 6) in protest at the company’s GM potato trials.
In a statement protest group Earth First! said 30 of its activist had shut down the plant 'to highlight the company's role in pushing GM onto our plates'.
BASF is planning to run the UK's only trial of GM crops this year featuring blight resistant potatoes.
The statement said the protesters arrived early in the morning and have since been blockading the gate to the plant by sitting in front of it and locking on sing d-locks and other equipment. The protesters, who have hung a giant 30 x 10ft banner reading "No To GM", were planning to blockade the gate for several hours.
"They are successfully preventing any staff from entering and are demanding the company pull out of GM immediately," the statement said.
Mary Sunderland from Earth First! Said: "GM has no part to play in our future: it's a dangerous, unwanted and unproven technology geared towards maximising profits for multinational corporations such as BASF. It is not the answer to food shortages, hunger or climate change. The real solution is to change now to a sustainable farming system and to distribute resources fairly around the world."
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2.Anti-GM protest shuts down BASF UK headquarters http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/05/398334.html
This morning 30 protesters from Earth First! have shut down the BASF UK headquarters (1) at Cheadle Hulme near Manchester (2), to highlight the company's role in pushing GM onto our plates. BASF is planning to run the UK's only trial of GM crops this year, a trial of blight resistant
potatoes.(3)
The protesters arrived early in the morning at the flagship offices and have since been blockading the gate by sitting in front of it and locking on sing d-locks and other equipment. They are successfully preventing any staff from entering and are demanding the company pull out of GM immediately. They have
also hung a giant 30 x 10ft banner reading "No To GM". The protesters are planning to blockade the gate for several hours.
Mary Sunderland from Earth First! Said: "GM has no part to play in our future: it's a dangerous, unwanted and unproven technology geared towards maximising profits for multinational corporations such as BASF. It is not the answer to food shortages, hunger or climate change. The real solution is to change now to a sustainable farming system and to distribute resources fairly around the world."
The bio-tech industry claims GM will feed the world's poor, but experts disagree. A major new study published in April shows that modified soya produces 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, confirming earlier studies showing the same trend. The study finds that the very process of modification depresses productivity.(4)
This revelation came just a week after the biggest study of its kind ever conducted,the International Assessment of Agricultural Science, concluded that GM was not an answer to world hunger. The UN study, conducted by over 400 scientists and approved by over 54 governments is a sobering account of the failure of industrial farming. The key message of the report is that small-scale farmers and agro-ecological methods provide the way forward to
avert the current food crisis and deal with the effects of climate change.(5)
Neil Ross from Earth First! UK adds: "It's time for everyone who is concerned about the future of our food and environment to stand up again and to say 'No to GM'. When five years ago 86 per cent of the UK public said that they did not want GM foods the government and bio-tech industry brushed those concerns aside as unscientific. Science is now proving that we were right to oppose GM. Thanks to the courage of many ordinary people who ripped up GM crops our countryside has been GM free for the past four years. (6) We are determined to keep it that way. The message to BASF and the government couldn't be clearer. Stop wasting money on GM (7) and start investing in the real solutions to hunger: small-scale organic farming and equitable trade."
Notes
(1)BASF is the world's leading chemical company.
(2) Heading south from Manchester on the A34 , turn right onto Stanley Road (B5094). Take the second left onto Earl Road. Continue under the flyover (Manchester Airport Eastern Link Road) and BASF HQ is on your right.
(3) The UK trials of BASF's blight resistant potatoes were due to take place from last spring at two locations for a period of five years. One site is a research centre in Cambridge, where last year anti-gm campaigners succeeded in destroying the field during a night time raid. The second trial site was never planted as BASF was unable to find a site for it. Campaigners have already vowed to decontaminate the Cambridge site again, should BASF go ahead with the controversial trial. Many believe that the trials are unnecessary as blight resistant potatoes are already available through conventional breeding.
(4) The study was carried out over the past three years by the University of Kansas in the US grain belt and published by Professor B Gordon in the journal 'Better Crops'. He grew a Monsanto GM soy bean resistant to the herbicide Round-up and compared it with a conventional variety. The GM
bean produced only 70 bushels per acre compared to 77 bushels for the conventional bean.
(5) The report from the United Nations World Food Programme, the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) called for a back-to-basics approach to farming to meet the challenges of climate change and escalating food prices. The authors saw little role for GM technology in feeding the poor. The report was based on a rigorous and peer-reviewed analysis of the empirical evidence by hundreds of scientists and development experts.
 http://www.agassessment.org/
(6) When GM crop trials started in the UK in 1998, no one could have predicted the public opposition to it. Within just 5 years, all GM
companies including Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer had retreated from Britain, numerous field trials had been destroyed and a moratorium against GM crop growing had been imposed.10 years later, Britain is still free from any commercial growing of GM crops. This opposition has also sparked massive resistance elsewhere in Europe.
(7) Using the Freedom of Information Act Friends of the Earth managed to obtain still partial information in October 2007 which shows that the
Government gave at least GBP50 million a year for research into GM crops and food, compared with GBP1.6 million for research into organic agriculture last year, in spite of repeated promises to promote environmentally friendly, sustainable farming. http://www.i-sis.org.uk/dirty_GM_secrets.php
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