GM Free Australia Alliance SA Forum Monday 16 April 2012

How can SA remain GM-free & why the moratorium must stay

Panel discussion and Q&A

Come hear local and visiting speakers detail the risks genetically modified crops pose to South Australia’s clean, green image, the importance of keeping the GM ban in place and what you can do to ensure the safety of your food supply.

PANELISTS :

• Associate Professor Judy Carman, Flinders University
• Dr Phillip Davies, Institute of Health and Environmental Research
• Fran Murrell, Mothers Are Demystifying Genetic Engineering (MADGE) co-founder
• Geoffrey Carracher, Network of Concerned Farmers spokesperson
• Mark Parnell, Greens Member of the Legislative Council
• Nick Xenothon TBC

FACILITATOR : Bob Phelps, Gene Ethics director

GM-free refreshments will be served.

When : 6pm for 6.30pm start, finishes 9 pm; Monday 16 April
Where : The Box Factory 
Community Centre, Regent Street South, Adelaide.
RSVP (for catering): aclements@internode.on.net

This SA forum on GM is hosted by the GM-Free Australia Alliance

GM Food Presentation by Dr. Judy Carman and Prof. GE Séralini

WHERE:
University of South Australia
West Campus
Hans Heysen Building
Room:
HH3-09 Lecture Theatre

WHEN:
Wednesday 29 February 2012 6:45 – 8:15 p.m.

COST:
Free

Dr. Judy Carman:
Professor Health and the Environment
School of the Environment
Flinders University
Links:

• Institute of Health and Environmental Research Directors
• Scientific Paper : Is GM food safe to eat?
• Critique of GE soy beans

Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini:
Professor of Molecular Biology, University of Caen in France
President of the scientific council of CRIIGEN:
Committee for Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering
Expert on GMO’s: Genetically Modified Organisms
Links:

• CRIIGEN www.criigen.org
• Transparency in GMO Risk Assessment
• Genetically Modified Organisms in Question
• Biography DOC
• Resume DOC

Keep South Australia’s Future GM Free

South Australians continue to support the GM crop moratorium in this state.  This was made evident when earlier this year, SA Business put out a call for the South Australian government to end the GM crop moratorium.

Public reaction to this news left no doubt as to how the majority of South Australians feel about keeping South Australia GM-free.  Over several days, the Advertiser newspaper published letters to the editor that expressed support for the GM ban.  The Adelaide Now online news service also received similar feedback to the article.

SAGFIN was established in 1998 when the first GM products began making their way on to Australian supermarket shelves and many Australians were unaware of the existence of GM foods.  Back then, the argument put forward by GM promoters was that if the Australian public rejected GM food it was because the public was uneducated and uninformed about the genetic manipulation of food crops.  Today the public have demonstrated that they are well informed about the issues relative to GM crops and food and their opposition is even stronger. 

The reaction to the call to lift the moratorium was a reminder to our state government of the public’s support for the ban.  The present government extended the moratorium in 2008 and has confirmed its commitment to supporting the ban until 2019. SAGFIN understands that the state opposition has also committed to supporting the ban but only until the next election in 2014. SAGFIN will be endeavouring to meet with the Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Adrian Pederick MP, in the new year and in the meantime has secured a meeting with Gail Gago MLC, Minister for Agriculture, for January 2012 in order to discuss their respective views on the future of GM agriculture in South Australia. The Greens have a clear policy on GMO’s and support applying the precautionary principle by maintaining “a moratorium on the release of GMOs into the environment until there is an adequate scientific understanding of their long term impact on the environment, and human and animal health.”

The benefits to South Australia of upholding the ban have been proven.  While Western Australia continues to suffer from contamination issues since it approved the commercial cultivation of genetically engineered crops in 2010, South Australian farmers are reaping the benefit of a premium for their non-GM crops.  A premium of $50/tonne over the price for GM canola was confirmed this year by Co-operative Bulking Handling and the premium is expected to be maintained. South Australia has positioned itself well to take advantage of any market that shuns Western Australia because of GM contamination concerns.  While the benefits of the moratorium may be obvious for many of the food producers in South Australia, some sectors of the food industry continue to oppose the moratorium.

No doubt the GM industry will continue its push to have the moratorium removed in South Australia and will intensify its efforts as we move towards the next election but by continuing to be pro-active, vigilant and timely with our responses we can keep SA GM-free.

GM Free : the Way to Be

Business SA put the issue of GM (genetically modified) crops in the spotlight and opened up an opportunity to lay the facts out as they really are.

SA’s new premier, Jay Weatherill, won’t need a survey to know where the voters stand on government policy that protects SA’s food producers’ clean and green image.

Business SA may well be wishing the call to drop the GM crop ban in SA had never made it to the front page of the Advertiser newspaper (19/10/11) as the response from the SA public was swift and robust.

It came from a wide demographic of well-informed individuals who overwhelmingly took a GM-free stance.

The position of maintaining the GM crop moratorium in SA is also supported by the Liberals and Greens.

Ten years ago if you had asked the public in the street their opinion on genetically engineered food many wouldn’t have known what you were talking about.

Today whether you call it GE, GM or genetically modified food, most people have an opinion and their opinion more often than not is based on fact.

In their collective letters to the editor and on-line comments, the public identified a wide range of issues concerning GM food and crops including:

1. INSERTING bacterial DNA into food crops in order to produce herbicide tolerance and Bt toxins
2. LACK of food safety testing
3. PATENTING of seeds
4. EXPENSE to farmers in buying GM seeds
5. COST and restrictions imposed by the license to grow
6. LOSS of a premium paid for non-GM crops and contamination of conventional seed and crops.

Within months of the first commercially grown GM canola being planted in WA in 2010, farmer Steve Marsh lost his organic certification when GM seed contaminated two-thirds of his arable land.

He believed seed may have blown in from a neighbouring farm.

With Kangaroo Island already claiming a premium price from the Japanese market for its canola, SA stands to benefit from WA’s demise.

Just over a week ago Australia was visited by a Japanese consumer cooperative seeking GM-free supplies of canola.

Clearly, the best future for SA is a GM-free future.

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Note: Originally published online at
www.ourworldtoday.com.au

Silent Forest Showing

Willunga meeting about Silent Forest David Suzuki

Contents:

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Supported by the Adelaide & Mt lofty Ranges NRM Board

Video Evening & Discussion

(supper provided)

Thursday 19^th May @ 7pm

Our Guest Speaker, Dr Phil Davies, Director of the Institute of Health & Environmental Research, will introduce the movie and be available for the discussion afterwards.

A Silent Forest is a documentary about the largely unknown potential danger to human health, and the environmental health of our planet, posed by the planned introduction of genetically engineered trees.

Narrated by Dr. David Suzuki, the film lays out, in compelling detail, the dangers of open-air plantations of these untested man-made trees, and the added problem of intellectual property rights.

With the potential for cross contamination of private, and national, and state forests with patented genes contained in the pollen of genetically engineered trees, who would now own these infected trees? Would a company like Monsanto be able to go into a national forest and harvest the infected trees because they contain their patented genes?

This film is a wake-up call to the dangers of genetic engineering of trees, and the impact it could have on all of us.

For Bookings; call in to 18 High St, Willunga, phone 8556 4188, or email:willungaenviro@westnet.com.au

NO Genetic in AUSFTA ?

A government document storage area was accessed to obtain copies of the five main portions of the Australia United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA).

These documents were obtained as PDF files (Adobe document format) and searches were made through the documents for the string terms

• genet
• biotech

There was NO detection of these strings in the documents.

We had been advised that there was a clause in the AUSFTA that specifically provided a clear pathway to market for Genetically Modified food but it was not found in the five main principal documents of the AUSFTA.

Further conversion of these five documents to text files was done, a reliable text search tool was used to examine them, and, once again :

There was NO detection of the string “genet” in the documents.

Also, searches for the words “gm” and “ge” and “gmo” were made and these strings, as words, were also NOT in the documents.

It is possible that there is NO mention of a “clear pathway to market for Genetically Modified food” in the AUSFTA.

The web site where the AUSFTA documents may be examined is:

www.dfat.gov.au/trade/negotiations/us_fta/final-text

Here are some copies of the AUSFTA at SAGFIN.WordPress.com:

Final_text_ausfta
Annex_I_combined
Annex_II_combined
Annex_III_Aus
Annex_III_US

How to Avoid GM Food

To avoid GM foods:

• Be very wary of processed foods.
• Be aware that many labels are so vague that you cannot work out the source of ingredients such as “vegetable oils” or “thickeners” and processing agents are not listed.
• Anything that is “Product of Australia” which doesn’t contain cottonseed products, canola products or unspecified vegetable oils should be ok.
• Organic certification in Australia precludes GM contamination. This is NOT the case with American organic produce.
• Most GM crops are grown in the USA – avoid American imports in particular.
• Milk products from the US can be from cows treated with GM growth hormone.

Note: there is no labelling of animal products (meat, eggs, dairy) from animals fed GM foodstuffs, and pork can be treated with GM growth hormones.

GM foods to watch for are:

• Bacterial Starter Cultures and Enzymes – cheese and fermented and leavened products
• Canola – “vegetable oils”, canola oil, baked and fried goods, margarines, salad dressings, lethicin
• Corn/Maize – corn flour, corn oil, corn protein, corn syrup, corn starch, glucose, maltodextrin, dextrose, modified starches, thickeners, additives, corn products e.g. corn flakes etc.
• Cottonseed products – oil as ‘vegetable oil” in many baked goods, take away fried foods, salad dressings etc., thickeners (linters) – thickened processed foods e.g. icecreams and many others, and sausage casings.
• Fungal Enzymes and Yeasts – bread, beer, fruit juices
• Lucerne – animal feed, alfalfa sprouts, tea
• Processed potato products – potato starch, modified starch, thickeners
• Rice – gluten free products, baby cereal, rice crackers, rice bran oil, thickening agents
• Soy products- soymilks, tofu, soy protein, soy flour, soy or vegetable oils, lecithin, various food additives, processing aids; soy protein isolates in processed foods such as bread, smallgoods and processed meats, soups, vegetarian foods, infant cereals and formulas, and ice creams.
• Sugarbeet – sugar, MSG
• Vitamins – some are produced by GMOs. So are some processing aids.