HHGMAG PAGE                             

1)  Hemel Hempstead G M Action Group

2)  Farm Scale Trials

3)  CROPS A FLOP PARTY  and other  HHGMAG PRESS RELEASES

4)  Hertfordshire School Meals

5)  Debates and meetings    Mae-Wan Ho and Steven Druker in Hemel, DETR Luton, Rothamsted.

6)  Rothamsted Institute for Arable and Crop Research   Report by Malcolm Hockham plus FOE press release.

7)  Bob Fiddaman

8)  Dacorum District Council G M Policy

9)  Third World

10)  Rudolph goes to London

11)  Local MPs vote on GM Bill

12)  EU - MEP backs HHGMAG

13)  Supermarkets - specimen letter

13)  Petition - Keep Britain G M Free

14) LEAKED results from the trials of genetically modified crops show GM oilseed rape is damaging the environment.

  (1) Hemel Hempstead G M Action Group

Hemel MP Tony McWalter at the Action day on 22nd January in the Marlowes.

A 25 acre field of Genetically Modified Oilseed Rape was planted on Thursday 9th September 1999. The site was Wood Farm, Dodds Lane, Piccotts End, north of Hemel Hempstead. The crop was owned by German biotechnology giant Agrevo, a joint venture between Hoechst and Schering. Agrevo since merged with Rhone-Poulenc into the new agro-chemical/GE giant Aventis. In November 2000 Aventis announced that it would sell its agricultural business - sales at the CropScience division have been declining. In October 2001 it was bought by Bayer of Germany and is imaginatively renamed Bayer CropScience. Bayer CropScience is one of four independent operating subsidaries within Bayer AG. It is the world's No. 2 supplier of farm chemicals and seeds.

The crop was resistant to the herbicide Liberty (glufosinate-ammonium).  It can be destroyed by weedkillers such as Roundup or Paraquat. The farmer is Bob Fiddaman.

Hemel Hempstead G M Action Group is building on the success of two public debates and a petition which has been enthusiastically supported. Nearly seven thousand signatures have been gathered. A programme of events has included Action Days in town centres where we've set up an information stall, collected signatures and raised awareness of the issues.

The local press have covered the campaign and we have been interviewed and featured in news bulletins on Chiltern Radio, Mix96 FM, Three Counties Radio and Radio 4, Channel 5 and BBC2 TV. A new report detailing the possible allergic reactions to GMO's written by campaign organiser Jennifer Worth is being published by the charity Action For Allergy. We can provide speakers for meetings of local clubs and societies.

We held a celebration in Gaddesden Row near the field, entitled the "Crops A Flop Party", on April 9th 2000.

HHGMAG CONTACT DETAILS

hhgmag@btinternet.com

DONATIONS

Any donations will be gratefully received. Please make cheques payable to ‘HHGMAG’ and send to: Jennifer Worth, The White House, St Johns Road, Hemel Hempstead HP1 1QG

"Once released into the environment, unlike a BSE epidemic or chemical spill, genetic mistakes cannot be contained, recalled or cleaned up, but will be passed on to all future generations indefinitely". - Dr Michael Antoniou, Clinical Geneticist & Senior Lecturer in Molecular Pathology, London.

(3) HHGMAG PRESS RELEASES  

 HEMEL CROP FLOPS           PRESS RELEASE number 11 14/03/00

The Genetically Modified oilseed rape crop at Hemel Hempstead has failed. The majority of the plants have failed to grow. The twenty five acre field of the “Farm Scale Trial” is mostly brown mud. The control field has also failed according to the farmer speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme recently, but it looks 100 times healthier to us. Apparently it is going to be reseeded. The “scientific experiment” being conducted to measure the effects of the weedkillers on a few selected organisms is continuing says Dr Ian Woiwod of Rothamsted who is in charge. Dr Woiwod claims that there is sufficient growth for his needs. The Hemel Hempstead G M Action Group campaign was to culminate in a rally at the GM site on Sunday 9th April.  We had planned a major event, however now that there is hardly any crop to see we are planning an informal celebration in Gaddesden Row near the field, entitled the "Crops A Flop Party". All are welcome to come and join in from 1 PM on the 9th and toast the failure of the genetically modified plants to grow. It should be a happy occasion. The farmer is likely to grow further GM crops soon and so we are expecting to hold a big Garden Party in the summer.

   “CROPS A FLOP PARTY”            PRESS RELEASE number 12 10/04/00

HEMEL PARTY A SUCCESS

The sun shone at Gaddesden Row, Hemel Hempstead on Sunday April 9th, but too late to revive the genetically modified crops which have faded away. More than 100 people from as far away as Devon came to celebrate the failure of farmer Fiddamans winter oilseed rape to flower. Speeches, jugglers and music kept partygoers entertained before everyone embarked on a massed march around the fields.

The police were on hand all afternoon to make sure that the event was not disrupted and to escort the walk around the ex-crop. Demonstrators were full of praise for the conduct of the Hertfordshire Constabulary. BBC cameras were busy recording the event for the Country File television programme.

It was a great day for activists from far and wide to get together and see the site and for people to meet who had only spoken by phone or email. Hemel is becoming a focus of attention in the GM controversy, largely due to the fanaticism of Mr Fiddaman who is a leading light in the pro GM lobby and one of only three farmers nationally to have attempted a winter GM trial.

Soon after Easter our petition is to be presented by local MP Tony McWalter to the Government and hopes are high that the voices of the seven thousand who signed it will be listened to and that the spring sowing of GM rape will be cancelled. If not watch out for another demonstration in the summer to coincide with flowering, should the crop last that long.

  (4) GM foods in school meals

 Use of Genetically Modified Food      Hertfordshire County Council Statement  7.12.99

Hertfordshire County Council has, since last year, asked that no products supplied to us should contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs). We have now received specific assurances from all of our suppliers that this is, in fact, the case. Hertfordshire County Council already has a widely respected Healthy Eating Policy covering school meals. Among other things, this policy requires fresh fruit and vegetables to be provided and prevents use of artificial colourings. We will continue to work hard towards a position where we can offer clear, definitive guidance and guarantees on the complex issue of food safety.

Bob Heaton General Manager Shire County Catering tel 01920 888247

N.B. Caterers and food producers confused by new GM labelling laws can now get guidance from a Leicestershire County Council leaflet. The Council's trading standards service have produced the leaflet to show how labelling rules work and which foods they apply to. It takes account of the recent changes in the law which widened the scope to include genetically modified additives and flavourings and food supplied to caterers. For those traders who wish to supply food without GM Soya, it also provides ways to find suppliers of none GM soya. To get a free copy traders can call 0116 265 7979 or visit the web site www.leics.co.uk  (from food at foe 8/9/00).

  (5) Hemel Hempstead Debate 18th February 2000

A public meeting on Genetically Modified (GM) Foods was held at West Herts College in Hemel Hempstead before an audience of over 100 people. The world renowned biologist Dr Mae-Wan Ho and local Labour MP Tony McWalter were confronting farmer Bob Fiddaman and Dr Vernon Barber, a food science adviser to the National Farmers Union. Steven Druker from the US Alliance for Biointegrity was present and was also invited to speak.

Tony McWalter was the first to speak. He said that what seems a miracle to one generation can seem a desperate impoverishment of the environment to the next generation. DDT was overused from 1950 to 1970, followed by a rethink. Knowledge of the environment is shared widely between many brains. Not even a Newton or Einstein can know everything about the world. In the GM debate there are scientists pretending that they know it all but they cannot. It is vital for environmentalists to be scientifically informed. It needs good scientists to understand and protect the environment. When people start to think that they can do something with possibly incalculable consequences for the environment it is time to say halt. We tamper with biodiversity at our peril. Support the caution first principle. Until GM crops are proved to be safe they must be left in the laboratory.

Bob Fiddaman, the farmer growing a Farm Scale Trial locally, said that he had been on the NFU biotechnology working group since it started in 1995 and helped develop protocols now endorsed by the government. They had recommended that GM products should be kept separate and labelled. The FST is a comparison on 2 plots of the effect on insects and the higher species that rely on them. Nothing is risk free; it is quite probable that things will be perceived differently in 15 years time. Mobile phones are an example of a situation where risks have been ignored in favour of the benefits. Breeding of plants has been unnatural for the last 30 years, for example seeds have been exposed to radiation.

Dr Mae-Wan Ho said that corporations are trying to force GM crops on the world but both farmers and consumers are rejecting them and they are on the way out. There is an unstoppable tidal wave of resistance fuelled by people power. The real scientific information is getting out. Steven Druker is involved in a civil lawsuit against the Food and Drugs Administration and documents are coming to light showing that the FDA ignored the warnings of its own scientists of the dangers such as of antibiotic resistance. The first GM crop (a tomato) failed safety tests and no safety tests have been done on other crops. GM involves introducing a whole lot of strange genes from bacteria and viruses which are harmful to insects. Lectin can harm ladybirds and young rats. The process is hazardous because there is no limit to the sort of genes that you can introduce and you can make new combinations of genes that never existed in nature generating many random and unpredictable effects. Creation of new bacteria and viruses (from viral resistant GM crops) has health implications, for example many cancers are linked to the insertion of genetic material. In the MAFF library there are documents to show that many scientists advise against using GM material in animal feeds. No further environmental releases. Farm Scale Trials will give no useful information as they do not monitor for horizontal gene transfer effects or effects on human health. Sustainable organic agriculture is working. There is an organic revolution in agriculture and in western science. we must not stop this struggle against what the corporations are trying to do.

Dr Vernon Barber praised the Labour government for taking a cautious approach and for listening to public opinion! He said that the medical use of science was its main hazard, not GM crops, and gave for an example the danger of retroviruses for people being given the hearts of pigs. The EU/UK regulatory system is more open than the FDA and meetings are open and the minutes are on the internet. The main danger to human health from food is the risk of food poisoning from eating chicken. Chinese research shows that GM crops do not affect the digestive systems of animals. Dr Ho has a political agenda and wants to go back in time. Organic farming requires a larger proportion of land use as it cannot produce enough food without being supplemented by conventional farming.

Steven Druker was in the country having been invited to speak to MPs and to have a private meeting with the Environment Minister Michael Meacher. He is a public interest attorney representing a group of plaintiffs suing the FDA, firstly to stop GM crops until they have been legally tested and secondly to label those which are tested as safe. They object to the idea that GM foods can be considered to be substantially equivalent to conventional foods. GM crops in the USA produce lower yields and use more pesticides. Genetic engineering is a radical process that can lead to a whole range of unpredictable side effects. An amazing sham has gone on in the name of science. Recombinant DNA techniques can disrupt the organisms in ways so unpredictable that they do not deserve to be called a technology. Let sound science triumph.

Comment The meeting was open to all and was widely advertised. The majority of those attending were opposed to GM foods. This realistically has to be seen as a reflection of public opinion as a whole and it would be very difficult to find an audience anywhere where both sides were equally represented. Opinion seems to be very polarised and it is unlikely that many on either side were swayed by the arguments.

DETR meeting Wednesday 3 May in Luton

The panel was Judith Jordan, Ian Woiwod, Linda Smith, Pete Riley. The audience was not large. However it was not advertised in Hemel Hempstead papers at all. The overwhelming feeling of the meeting was strongly against GM. The message seems to be getting through. It was a bit hard on Linda Smith, a civil servant, to have to answer on behalf of Michael Meacher, and it was suggested that the Minister really should be there in person.

Meeting 16th May  "Rothamsted's role in farm trials of GM crops"  IACR-Rothamsted, Harpenden, Herts.

This was rather pro GM. The Director of Rothamsted, Professor Ian Crute, who chaired the meeting, is totally sold on GM and thinks that organic farmers have missed a great opportunity by not taking it up. The enthusiasm and the overconfidence they displayed was worrying. There were not enough people from the other side to put the case against. John Davis who used to run the Industrial Chemicals Monitoring Scheme expressed serious misgivings about the safety of the GM food product and the lack of testing for toxins etc.

It was admitted that the Farm Scale Trials were not sufficiently long term and that subtle effects on the environment will be hard to assess. The issue of whether earthworms and other soil organisms such as bacteria should be looked at was also mentioned. It was said that they were felt to be unlikely to be affected, that worms were more likely to be disturbed by the cultivation of the soil than by the herbicide use and that because the genes in the GM crop originally came from soil bacteria that exposure to the same material via the crop plants would be nothing new.

Friday 1st February 2002  "THE CASE AGAINST G M FOOD AND FARMING"  Hemel Hempstead G M Action Group presented a Public Meeting with Discussion.  Speakers: Luke Anderson, International Speaker, writer and researcher, Gary Reese, Compassion in World Farming, Chairman: Marc Scheimann, Prospective Green Party European Parliamentary Candidate. Marlowes Methodist Church, Hemel Hempstead.

(Reports by Martin Humphrey.)

10) Rudolph goes to London

Our Oral Representation at the Chardon LL seed list hearing was a full day on Thursday 2nd November - Rudolf presented with assistance from Diana at the Novotel Hotel in Hammersmith. Rudolph was also going to Manchester.

THE HEARING HAS NOW BEEN POSTPONED INDEFINITELY DUE TO THE EXPOSURE OF DODGY DATA SUBMITTED BY AVENTIS

Can we have our costs back please?

11) MEP backs HHGMAG

A statement from the office of Jeffrey Titford, M.E.P. 28th November 2000

"Jeffrey Titford is one of 8 M.E.P.s representing Hertfordshire. He is Leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party.

The Party believes that genetically modified seeds and crops (i.e.cross-species seeds and crops) are potentially dangerous with unknown effects. There are already recorded instances of genetically modified organisms and crops causing serious health problems. Therefore our Party wishes to see genetically modified seeds and crops tested only in conditions of maximum isolation and campaigns for an adequate time interval to evaluate their effects on the environment and on human health before their widespead introduction. Piccotts End is not suitably isolated.

Jeffrey does not therefore support the planting of GM crops at Piccotts End".

Contact UKIP at www.independenceuk.org.uk

Article from the "Farmer's Guide"  July 2000 by Jeffrey Titford, M.E.P.

"The Dangers of GM Technology"

This month, I would like to address a subject about which I get more correspondence than on most issues- GM foods, crops and seeds. Next week, I have arranged for Peter Sandbach of the GM biotech company, NOVARTIS, to take me round a GM crop trial site, somewhere in South Norfolk, or North Suffolk. It is all a bit secretive - the location hasn't been disclosed to me, and I am to meet Mr Sandbach at a venue yet to be arranged. I hope they don't blindfold me on the way!

I shall be very interested in what NOVARTIS have to say. One of the Region's M.P.'s, Labour's Bill Rammell, recently wrote a piece in his local newspaper claiming that unless the whole world switched to GM technology, 50 million or more people might starve to death. When my Research Department took this matter up with Mr Rammell, it appeared that he was singing from a hymn sheet provided by Monsanto, another leading biotech company manufacturing GM seeds.

I realise that some wonderful claims are made by those who make GM seeds and produce GM foods. For me, the issue is a simple one - protection of the public. This, after all, is a key function of any government: protection of the general public from external and internal threats, crime prevention, and, high on the list, food safety. After all, following the BSE scare, we must surely always err on the side of caution.

One group that has sent me a lot of fascinating information on the GM issue is the Burnhams Group, based in Burnham Overy Staithe. Their organiser, Caroline Clarke, is an activist who sends me much material of interest. I was persuaded by literature from them, and from the Friends of the Earth, that I should oppose the government's rather sneaky attempt to include a GM seed, maize, on the National Seed List. It seemed to me a way of getting GM technology in through the back door, when the government is publicly proclaiming that it is carefully evaluating GM crops before deciding whether or not to proceed.

My Research Department unearthed some highly disturbing facts relating to previous attempts to introduce GM technology. In 1989, a genetically-engineered bacterium was used to produce the food supplement "Tryptophan". This product killed 37 people, and permanently paralysed over 1,500 more, before it was withdrawn. Another much publicised case concerned the transfer of a gene from a brazil nut to a soya bean, to improve the protein content of the bean. Unknown to the genetic engineers, something else was also transferred, and people allergic to brazil nuts reacted to the soya beans. A more recent example was a GM yeast, produced to achieve an increased rate of fermentation, but which also produced a toxic by-product of fermentation.

Some people claim that genetic engineering has been going on ever since man was on the earth. Yes, but this has been "GM engineering" within a species only. It is certainly possible to select characteristics within the DNA of a species to enhance certain aspects - although the scientists tell me that if you enhance one feature of a species, there is usually a corresponding loss of function elsewhere. The difference with GM technology is that one is mixing the genes of entirely unrelated species - very often animal genes together with plant genes. One of the key anxieties is that by mixing up DNA sequences as the biotech scientists are doing, they will create brand new DNA sequences which will have unpredictable results. There are concerns about the effect of GM foods on the body's immune system, for example.

I confess I am extremely uneasy about the GM crop trials. There are more of them in the Eastern Region than any other region of the country. It is not possible to confine the crop trials just to the farms where the GM technology is being trialled. Bees and other insects can carry pollen for miles. I will listen to what NOVARTIS have to say with great interest. But I will need a lot of convincing.

***********

The EU Maastricht Treaty stipulates that EU policy on the environment shall contribute to the pursuit of the following objectives:

"Preserving, protecting and improving the quality of the environment; protecting human health; prudent and rational utilization of natural resources; promoting measures at international level to deal with regional or worldwide environmental problems."

"The protective measures adopted ..... shall not prevent any Member State from maintaining or introducing more stringent protective measures...."

See Articles 130 r,s and t at  http://europa.eu.int/en/record/mt/title2.html

"GM organisms have become the albatross around the neck of farmers" Gary Goldberg, American Corn Growers Association.

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