Protest against Teagasc's patented GMO potatoes this morning in Dublin

dublin | rights, freedoms and repression | event notice Wednesday September 12, 2012 04:16 by Michael O'Callaghan - GM-free Ireland Network moc at gmfreeireland dot org +41 79 948 5491

Good food Ireland RIP funeral march

Please join this non-violent protest to stop the patented GMO potato field trial now underway at Teagasc's Oak Park site in Co Carlow.

Meet today Wednesday 12 September at 11:30 at the Wolfe Tone memorial on the North East corner of Stephen's Green (near the Shelbourne hotel) in Dublin.

The procession will start at 12:00 sharp, proceeding along Stephen's Green via Dawson Street and Molesworth Street to Agriculture House on Kildare Street, where a letter and spade will be delivered to our Minister of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Simon Coveney

BACKGROUND:

Despite unanimous objection from all stakeholders who made submissions, the EPA recently granted Teagasc a license to conduct this unwanted experiment with GMO potatoes that are privately patented in the UK. Teagasc then knowingly planted the GMO spuds during the 3-month period allowed by law for stakeholders to file a judicial review. To add insult to injury, the High Court then refused to allow stakeholders to file a judicial review that is not prohibitively expensive. This whole procedure demonstrates the Irish government's blatant disregard for the Aarhus Convention (on access to information, public participation in decision-making, and access to justice in environmental matters) to which the EU and Ireland are a party.

Today, stakeholders from around the country will form a symbolic funeral procession following a coffin from Stephen's Green to Agriculture House in Dublin. The organisers will then deliver a letter and a spade to Simon Coveney (the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine), requesting him to instruct Teagasc to dig up the GMO spuds from the field in which they are now growing, and to place them indoors in a bio-secure lab until the stakeholders have been granted their legal right of access to justice guaranteed to all EU citizens

Taking part in this non-violent protest demonstrates our outrage at the continued attempts by Teagasc and our government to introduce GM crops in Ireland. It also signals our rejection of GM food, our disgust at patents on seeds, our opposition to any future field trials or cultivation of GMO crops on this island, and our support for protecting Ireland's economically valuable status as a GMO-free crop zone.

Participants are invited to wear funeral attire (black armband or clothes) and to bring placards and musical instruments.

This action is organised by the Organic Trust and no2GM

Contact person: Stella Coffey, email: [email protected]

Editor: See also GM potatoes in Ireland and Europe – The Patent Holders

For more information click the link below: