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- Sticky, noisy and remarkable: working in the Amazon jungle
- Greenpeace podcast: Coal gets the boot at Climate Camp
- Some good news for Indonesia's rainforests
- It's official: EU fishing policy is crazy
- Waiting for a nuclear disaster
- John West: the worst on tinned tuna
- Lean, green killing machine
- What it’s like at Climate Camp
- Get involved: Give coal the boot!
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What we've read
- Clash over plan to save tropical forests
- Plan for anaerobic digesters in every town to recycle leftovers
- Google buries $10m in underground power
- Water scarcity will only be tackled if we change the way we eat
- Urban Mining: The Hunt For Rare Metals
- Jatropha cultivation for biodiesel to be expanded in India
- Maasai 'can fight climate change'
- Climate controls: greenwash and the advertising industry
- China takes a lead on renewable energy
- India goes mega-solar
EC sounds alarm bells over GM crops
Posted by jossc on 12 May 2008.
GM food producers are reeling after new investigations by the European Commission (EC) uncovered problems with three new types of genetically modified crops. The Commission raised concerns over a new type of GM potato and two types of GM maize, all of which had previously been given the green light by European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). For the first time, Europe's most senior lawmakers are publicly questioning the safety of GM crops.
Read more »EU fudges GM potato vote
Posted by jamie on 19 February 2008.
Yesterday, EU farm ministers voted on whether to approve the use of new GM crops including a variety of potato developed by chemical giant BASF. According to Reuters, they failed to reach a consensus which is good in the sense that the proposed crops weren't approved, but bad because the decision will now be passed back to the European Commission. The EC is heavily pro-GM so it's likely that all five crops under consideration will be approved with a nod and a wink.
Read more »France bans Monsanto's GM maize
Posted by jamie on 15 January 2008.
Sacre bleu. At the end of last week, French president Nicolas Sarkozy took a stand against biotech giant Monsanto and banned a strain of GM maize which has previously been grown by French farmers.
Their MON 810 variety - according to AFP, the only type of GM maize currently being grown in France - has been withdrawn after a committee of scientists, farmers and politicians raised doubts over its continued use. Advocating the precautionary principle, Sarkozy invoked an EU clause to stop Monsanto's maize being grown.
Read more »GM crops can help prevent climate change? Shurely shome mishtake
Posted by jamie on 8 January 2008.
Those pesky biotech companies never give up. After recently spinning the line that GM crops can be used to safeguard food production from the ravages of climate change, their latest wheeze is to try and convince us that GM technology can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Read more »Counting the cost of GM contamination
Posted by jamie on 9 November 2007.
Indian farmers campaigning against GM rice near Lucknow earlier this week © Greenpeace
A couple of GM stories have popped up recently over on our international site, one of which requires your help.
Read more »France ups the stakes with a green "revolution"
Posted by bex on 30 October 2007.
A tad belated but I just couldn't let this one pass. Last week, these words emerged from France's environmental policymaking forum:
"From now on, every major public project, every public decision will be judged on its effect on climate, and on its carbon cost. Each public decision will be judged on how it affects bio-diversity. The onus won't be on ecological decisions to prove their merit, but on non-ecological projects to prove they can't be done any other way. Non-ecological decisions must be taken as a last resort. It's a total revolution in the way we govern our country."
Read more »GM: back with a vengeance?
Posted by jamie on 17 September 2007.
As if Monday mornings weren't generally bad enough, the Guardian's headline this morning warns of the "return of GM". Read more »
GM quarantine in Romania
Posted by jamie on 5 September 2007.

How's this for a creative and exciting example of direct action - it's a blockade but with a difference. Earlier this morning in Romania, Greenpeace volunteers quarantined a whole island where GM soya crops are being grown, which is illegal under EU law. Vehicles leaving Braila island were hosed down by people wearing white biohazard suits to prevent genetic contamination spreading to the mainland. Even a donkey and cart were washed and made GM-free!
Read more »Ten years in China
Posted by jamie on 2 July 2007.
With Blair's recent departure, recollections of 1997 in the media have been dominated by two things: his ascension to power and the Spice Girls. On the other side of the world in China, that same year was important for a couple of other reasons. Most famously, the lease ran out on a small but strategic piece of land called Hong Kong and the British Empire lost one of its last outposts as ownership return to the People's Republic of China.
But on that same piece of land, about the same time Chris Patten was bidding a teary farewell, something else significant happened (at least, we like to think it was) - Greenpeace China opened its doors. The importance of this particular office to the organisation can't be underestimated and, as this video shows, many of our campaigns can't help but take China's astonishing economic and social development into account. And with China now possibly the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, the next ten years are going to be even busier over there.
Consumers say, 'We don't want GM food'; EU says, 'What, not even in organic food?'
Posted by jamie on 14 June 2007.
A bizarre decision has been made by the EU to increase the maximum limit of GM material allowed in organic food, and effectively legitimise widespread GM contamination.
You might be alarmed to think that any GM ingredients end up in organic food, and you're right to be so. The previous maximum limit of 0.1 per cent was set simply because that was the lowest level that food could accurately be tested for GM contamination.
The new limit is 0.9 per cent, the same that applies to non-organic food, and while this might not sound like much, it does now mean that organic food can be polluted with much greater quantities of GM material before it has to be labelled with a warning. If organic food is tested and found to contain 0.8% GM contamination, it will be labeled as ‘GM free'.
This makes absolutely no sense. The success of organic foods has come about precisely because we trust them not to contain toxic chemicals and GM produce. As our campaigner Ben Ayliffe pointed out in the Independent, the shelves are groaning with organic food because it's what shoppers want, while GM food is conspicuous by its absence for the opposite reason.
For the EU to say it supports organic farming while increasing the level of contamination it can contain smacks of double standards. Do we see the lobbying fingerprints of the monolithic biotech companies all over this? I'll leave you to make up your own mind.


