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Alliance Calls for Halt to GM Crops in Spain: GM Contamination Threatens Non-GM Farming in Europe

Categories

Food

En Espagnol

Brussels and Madrid – While European decision makers argue over approving new genetically modified (GM) crops, a Spanish alliance of farmers and environmentalists led by Food & Water Europe demanded radical change in the European Union’s GM cultivation policy. The alliance says the results of a survey of organic farmers in the U.S. shows widespread GM contamination, proving that GM “coexistence” has failed and that the resulting costs and extra work are carried by non-GM farmers. [1] This is a clear warning for Spain, the only EU country growing GM crops on a large scale and where there are likely to be more GM crops soon if approvals in the pipeline for new GM maize varieties come through.

“The situation in the U.S. should be a clear warning for Spain and the rest of the EU not to make the same mistakes,” said David Sánchez, campaign officer at Food & Water Europe. “So-called ‘coexistence’ as promoted by the GM industry is simply impossible, as farmers in both the U.S. and Spain already know.”

The survey, published first in the U.S. by Food & Water Watch and the Organic Farmers’ Agency for Relationship Marketing [2] and released today in Europe, documents the added burden organic and non-GM farmers face, including the increased costs of trying to prevent contamination, extra labour, longer hours and financial insecurity due to economic losses when contamination occurs. The survey shows: 

  • Economic costs of preventive measures to avoid GMOs can reach more than €6,119 (US$8,500) per year, including buffer zones, delaying planting and testing among others.
  • One out of three responding farmers have dealt with GMO contamination in their farm. They reported a median cost of €3,240 (US$4,500). Of those contaminated farmers, over half have had crops rejected by their buyers.
  • Other consequences include abandoning crops with GM varieties approved or strained relations between neighbours.

“Farmers in Spain are already facing the same insecurity and lack of legal protection as U.S. colleagues, even though there is only one GM crop approved in the EU. Preventive measures and their costs should not be carried by the farmers that chose not to grow GMOs,” said Andoni García, member of the board of the Spanish Coordination of Farmers (COAG).

The Spanish organic cattle industry is also seriously affected by GM contamination. Forced to import maize from other countries that do not grow GM crops, farmers need to pay extra costs to guarantee GM-free feed. [3]

Considering the situation in the U.S., the COAG, Ecologistas en Acción, Friends of the Earth Spain and Food & Water Europe demand European authorities, including the Spanish Government, reverse current GMO crop policy.

“Organic farming is a growing sector that creates employment and puts new energies in rural areas. Protecting its development means we urgently need to stop growing GM crops in Spain. We cannot be the back door for GM crops into Europe any longer,” added Blanca G. Ruibal, food and farming campaigner at Friends of the Earth Spain. 

For more information:

David Sánchez, Campaign Officer, Food & Water Europe +32 485842604

Andoni García Arriola, member of the board of COAG, +34 636 451 569

Blanca G. Ruibal, Food Campaigner, Friends of the Earth Spain, +34 691471389

Gabriela Vázquez, spokesperson, Ecologistas en Acción, +34 635 170495

Notes 

[1] The report “Organic Farmers Pay the Price for GMO Contamination “ (“Los agricultores ecológicos pagan el precio de la contaminación por transgénicos”) can be downloaded in Spanish and English.

[2] Food & Water Europe is the European program of Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit consumer organization based in the United States that works to ensure the food, water and fish we consume is safe, accessible and sustainable. So we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of where their food comes from, keep clean, affordable, public tap water flowing freely to our homes, protect the environmental quality of oceans, force government to do its job protecting citizens, and educate about the importance of keeping shared resources under public control. http://www.foodandwatereurope.org/europe/

Organic Farmers’ Agency for Relationship Marketing is a cooperative incorporated in the State of Minnesota as a marketing-agency-in-common to support organic producer and their group marketing efforts through cooperatives and farmer association. Current efforts include organic grain, livestock and dairy. Member associations/cooperatives have organic producer members in 18 states from Montana to Texas to Tennessee to Ohio and Michigan and all states in between. www.ofarm.coop

[3] Questionnaire about the socio-economic implications of the placing on the market of GMOs for cultivation. A diagnosis by Spanish organizations: COAG, Ecologistas en Acción, Friends of the Earth Spain, Greenpeace and CECU

www.eurovia.org/IMG/doc/COAG_Socio-Economic_Report_EN-2.doc

London Zoo Pressed: Withdraw Support for “Dangerous” Conference

Categories

Common Resources

Brussels—An international coalition led by Food & Water Europe wrote to the London Zoological Society today urging it to withdraw from hosting an international conference on biodiversity offsetting due to take place at the Zoo’s Regent’s Park facility in June.

UK think tank The Corner House, Italian pressure group Re:Common, Spain’s Ecologistas en Accion, the Indigenous Environmental Network in the US and Urgewald in Germany joined in calling on the Zoo to pull out of the conference, saying biodiversity offsetting does not work and other, better options are available to protect the world’s ecosystems.

“We’ve explained to the Zoo that there are many better options available, and we would expect LZS themselves to be making this point to others engaged in the ongoing discussion rather than perpetuating the dangerous myth that you can pick up an ecosystem and move it somewhere else,” said Eve Mitchell, EU Food Policy Advisor for Food & Water Europe. “The whole concept of offsetting is flawed; it even starts from the wrong place by seeking to find a way to make construction projects easier instead of making them better. It’s not surprising such a ‘solution’ is counterproductive.” 

Mitchell added, “If flawed economic models and the bad behaviour of participants in economic systems have caused the problems we now face, we just don’t see how extending and complicating these institutions can be the solution. Based on the evidence from existing offsetting schemes, we firmly believe proper governmental oversight and regulation, coupled with robust enforcement and meaningful sanctions for violations, are the only real way to protect our common natural heritage from those who seek to profit from it. We urge the Zoo to join us in seeking real environmental protection. Pulling out of this conference would be a good start.”

Read the official letter here.

Contact:

Food & Water Europe – Eve Mitchel, +44 (0)1381 610 740 or +44 (0)7962 437 [email protected]

Albuquerque Memorial Calls For Statewide and National Labeling of GMOs

Categories

Food

Albuquerque, New Mexico — This week, City Councilman Isaac Benton, District 2, and co-sponsor Diane Gibson, District 7, introduced a memorial in the Albuquerque City Council that would support labeling of genetically engineered foods (GMOs) on a statewide and national level. The memorial was drafted with the support of the national consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch and is strongly backed by a diverse coalition of over 50 organizations and businesses in New Mexico including the La Montanita Food Coop, Dragon Farm, ProgressnowNM and Marchers Against Monsanto.

If passed, Albuquerque will join the city of Santa Fe in supporting giving people more transparency about whether or not their food contains GMOs. Since most processed foods contain some derivative of GMO corn, soybean or cotton, the city of Albuquerque would support labeling under this memorial.

“Labeling will give us the data we need to draw solid conclusions about GE foods, and it will give consumers the ability to make fully informed decisions about what we are eating and feeding our families,” said memorial sponsor Benton. “Right now, the companies that stand to profit from genetic engineering are making those decisions for us.”

GMOs are plants altered in a laboratory with foreign genetic material to create novel genetic combinations and exhibit traits that do not occur in nature. Although health risks associated with eating GMOs are not fully understood, these altered foods have become pervasive within our food system since they first became available in 1996. Companies submit their own safety testing data and independent research is limited because biotechnology companies prohibit cultivation for research purposes.

“It’s our right as citizens to know what is in our food,” said memorial co-sponsor Gibson. “In a democracy, corporations should not have special privileges that make it difficult for the average consumer to have transparency in what they consume. Labeling will give us the data we need to draw solid conclusions about GMO foods, and it will give consumers the ability to make fully informed decisions about what we are eating and feeding our families.”

Labeling GMOs is not a novel idea. Citizen-led campaigns have been successful getting legislation introduced in more than 20 states and ballot initiatives in California and Washington were narrowly defeated by multi-million-dollar campaigns waged by big food corporations. For years, polls have shown that the majority of Americans want genetically engineered foods labeled, just as it is in more than 60 other countries including the entire European Union, China, Japan and Russia.

“The impact of genetically engineered foods goes beyond consumer health. It also threatens the livelihood of farmers that grow non-GMO crops since GMO seed and the GMO-related pesticides can contaminate neighboring fields,” said Eleanor Bravo, Southwest Organizer for Food & Water Watch. “Consumers should be able to decide for themselves if genetically engineered foods should be fed to their families.”

The memorial will be heard in the Finance & Government Operations Committee on April 28. Once it passes this committee, it will head to the full City Council for a vote in May. The memorial can be viewed here: http://fwwat.ch/Q5nToN

Contact: Eleanor Bravo, ebravo(at)fwwatch(dot)org, 505-633-7366

Spate of New Research on Fracking Shows We (still) Know Very Little About its Impacts

Categories

Water

Brussels – Recent research results on the impacts of fracking show that the large-scale exploitation of shale gas and other unconventional fossil fuels has been allowed to move ahead without properly monitoring its impacts. Researchers – regardless of their discipline –  who want to study the impacts of fracking on the climate, water and air quality or public health are confronted with the reality that no systematic data-gathering has occurred where fracking is allowed to proceed. Scientists whose work was published in journals like Marine and Petroleum Geology, Climatic Change, The Lancet and The Medical Journal of Australia all come to similar conclusions, namely that publicly available data are scarce to non-existent. This lack of data allows the fossil fuel industry to maintain their speaking point of ‘no data, no problem’ and ‘no reported cases of groundwater contamination due to fracking’. For countries where fracking is allowed to proceed – despite the growing body of evidence of the negative impacts -, Food & Water Europe has long insisted that authorities need to establish strategic monitoring programmes to allow for the early identification of negative impacts on air, water and public health.

“The lack of publicly available data about the impacts of fracking from the US and the complete absence of a strategic monitoring capability in EU Member States for the fracking industry exposes European citizens and their environment to a broad range of risks”. said Food & Water Europe policy officer Geert De Cock. “The precautionary principle should compel the EU and its Member States to impose an immediate moratorium on fracking and unconventional fossil fuels”.

In January 2014, the European Commission launched a non-binding recommendation “minimum principles for the exploration and production of hydrocarbons (such as shale gas) using high volume hydraulic fracturing”. These minimum principles also emphasize the importance baseline data, continuous monitoring and transparency. Unfortunately, the European Commission’s recommendation puts the responsibility for monitoring the impacts of fracking mainly with the operator and shies away from obliging Member States to organise their own, frequent and unaccounted visits of the – typically, very numerous – well pads for unconventional oil and gas drilling. The recommendation also fails to outline credible sanctions for operators that fail to comply with these recommendations. Last but not least, it remains unclear how the European Commission will enforce this non-binding recommendation on recalcitrant Member States.

Contact: Geert Decock tel. +32 (0)2 893 10 45, mobile +32 (0)484 629.491, gdecock(at)fweurope.org

European Commission fails to take real steps towards the recognition of the Human Right to Water

Categories

Food

The European Water Movement regrets that the European Commission decided not to take real actions, ignoring 1,9 million citizens

Brussels – The European Commission (EC) made public today the communication on the European Citizen’s Initiative on the Right to Water. The communication fails to respond to 1,9 citizens asking for a legislative provision excluding water and sanitation from “internal market rules” and liberalization. The EC’s reaction is lacking in real legislative proposals, and it boils down to a compilation of already ongoing actions plus the announcement of a public consultation on the drinking water directive whose outcomes will not be binding.

While the Commission acknowledges the importance of the Human Right to Water and Sanitation and it confirms water as a public good, the EC fails to propose legislation that recognizes this right. The Commission also commits to promote universal access to water and sanitation in its development policies, including the promotion of public-public partnerships.

Water and sanitation services were excluded from the concession directive thanks to public pressure, but the Commission has not committed in its Communication to explicitly exclude these services from the trade negotiations (such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – TTIP).

The answer of the European Commission to the first European Citizen’s Initiative (ECI) to achieve the required support will not reassure European citizens who question the democratic legitimacy of the European institutions. The European Water Movement (of which Food and Water Europea makes part) considers that overall the Communication does not address the actual demands to guarantee the Human Right to Water and Sanitation, and implies a bad precedent for the future of the ECI mechanism.

Water privatization remains a very concrete menace in the EU. In countries like Greece and Portugal, the Troika is pushing for water privatization, and more and more citizens are being deprived of water access in municipalities where water supply is managed by private companies. In line with the signatures collected for the Initiative, citizens are fighting against water privatization across the EU, with many examples of massive mobilizations in Italy with the 2011 binding referendum, the local consultations in Madrid and Berlin, more recent mobilizations in El Puerto de Santa María (Spain) and upcoming local public consultations in Thesaloniki (Greece) or Alcazar de San Juan (Spain). 

Water should be a commons, not a commodity. The European Citizen’s Initiative expected the European Commission to propose legislation implementing the Human Right to Water and Sanitation as recognized by the United Nations, and to promote the provision of water and sanitation as essential public services for all. The European Water Movement will continue to support local struggles in places such as Thesaloniki or Alcazar de San Juan to ensure that water is declared a common good. And it will remind candidates in the elections for the European Parliament of the importance of recognizing that water is a human right, to concretely act towards its implementation and to avoid liberalization and commodification of water and sanitation services. 

For more information:

David Sanchez, dsanchez(at)fweurope.org, +32 485842604

Caterina Amicucci, camicucci(at)recommon.org +39 3498520789

The European Water Movement is an open, inclusive and pluralistic network of movements, social organizations, local committees and unions whose goal is to reinforce the recognition of water as a commons and as a fundamental universal right, an essential element for all living beings. We are part of the global water justice movement. We are united to fight against privatisation and commodification of this vital good, and to construct a public and communal management of water, founded on the democratic participation of citizens and of workers.

www.europeanwater.org

UK GM Report: Vested Interests Miss the Point

Categories

Food

Statement from Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter

Brussels—“Food & Water Europe dismissed today’s United Kingdom report calling for more GM trials in the UK as “a chronically flawed effort from blinkered vested interests. The UK’s pro-GM government asked a group of GM scientists and lobbyists what we should do about GM food and crops. Since many of the scientists involved make money from GM, it’s no surprise they want more of it. But this situation begs the question: shouldn’t those advising the Government on GM be a bit more independent, or at least a little more distant from the profits?

“The report  aims for a shift to U.S.-style regulation based on “substantial equivalence,” rather than the EU’s clear case-by-case precautionary evaluation of each GMO in turn. This attempt to portray GMOs as “just the same” also undermines the very labels that help EU consumers find, and roundly reject, GM products on supermarket shelves.

“The biggest problem with the report is that it misses the point—if industrial food production was going to end hunger, it would have done so by now. We need a much smarter approach to feeding ourselves, with more respect for what farmers do, a sentiment that was reflected in a report called Wake Up Before It’s Too Late, which the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development issued last year.

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