Statements

Jo Hamilton

I have chosen today to take part in the genetiX snowball campaign, and am taking the responsibility of pulling up and making safe 25 Genetically Modified (GM) plants. Throughmy actions I hope to highlight my concerns about genetic manipulation of food crops, and to encourage other people to take similar action. I am choosing to pull up 25 plants because I am 25 years old. Food and life are inextricable, this action is symbolic of the life which non GM food has given me, and the life I intend to continue, GM free. I am doing this in a nonviolent and accountable way because I am acting responsibly and doing what I believe to be right under the circumstances. I would hope that by pulling up and making safe a token number of plants, debate about GM foods will be stimulated between the general public, the farmers, the biotech companies and the government, on the necessity and safety of GM foods. I have listened to and read the opinions of many scientists and have come to the conclusion that growing GM food is wrong, because it is unneccessary, unwanted and unsafe.

Some of my main concerns are around the inextricable relationship between GM food and our global economic system. Important decisions regarding the future of our world are taken at the level of the World Trade Organisation, which serves the interests of multinational corporations and richer nations. When market forces in the form of multinational corporations seek to control world trade, concerns over moral, ethical and saftey issues are disregarded. Nonviolent action is required to put them back in the centre stage, where they belong. Biotechnology is being heralded as the answer to our current problems. Coming from companies whose primary aim has always been,and will continue to be prfit- led, I find their sales pitch hard to swallow. My concerns are echoed here in a quote from Dr Melaku Worede, an Ethiopean agricultural scientist, who says 'In spite of all eveidence pointing to the high diversity, productivity and sustainability of small family farms, globalisation is wiping out these efficient systems and replacing them with inefficent and unhealthy industrialised food systems under corporate control'. I have outlined below some of my main objections to the use of biotechnology for food.

Biotechnology will never produce a cure for world hunger, as this is caused by economic and political regimes which rely upon their inherent inequalities.

• Biotechnology creates dependency upon a few companies to supply farmers with the entire food package.
• Biotechnology cannot be trusted. Companies at the forefront such as Dupont and Monsanto, have always promoted non-sustainable, industrial and socially inequitable agriculture – any claims otherwise are a marketing wash.
• Biotechnology encourages biopiracy – the appropriation and control of indigenous knowledge by biotech and agricultural giants to serve a narrow agenda of profit and control at the expense of justice and biodiversity.

A handful of multinational corporations are seeking to control the world's food supply in a global marketplace where humans are reduced to the status of consumer, and citizens' rights are not considered. A recent MORI poll concluded that 77% of people in the UK do not want GM foods. GM foods are being forced upon us through the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. There has been no public consultation and we are all being made a part of the genetic experiment whether we like it or not.

As a concerned citizen it is my right to stand up and be counted in opposition to this experiment. I would like to see an end to genetic test field sites now, and am calling on the government to have a 'five year moratorium on the deliberate release of Genetically Modified plants in Britain, except for specified independent saftey test (in enclosed systems); and the removal and safe destruction of all GM crops already existing. When this reasonable request has been met, the genetiX snowball will be called off.

Signed: Jo Hamilton