Time to relaunch campaigns against GM

Following the Government's secret push to role out GM across the EU - see more here - GMWatch has launched a new campaigning website at www.banGMfood.org to help people take action - meanwhile a new campaign to keep our future GM-free has been launched in a special GM edition of The Ecologist. Mine came through the door earlier this week and over half the issue is on GM - a comprehensive look at the topic with important updates on the latest developments - see more here. See also re Stroud talk coming soon here.

It seems to me this is an issue that will require us all to get active again - in the past folk marched in Stroud to stop GM and many have signed petitions, written letters and more - many of our councils in the country have declared themselves GM-free yet still the push is there.Have we got the energy for another fight? Yes. Already Friends of the Earth have launched a campaign and the new website above carries details of that and letters to send to your supermarket. Go here to take action: www.bangmfood.org/take-action

The other news is that Lord Drayson has finally taken over Lord Sainsbury's old job as science minister. Drayson, like Sainsbury, has had big financial interests in biotechnology. He is the former head of the BioIndustry Association. Also like Sainsbury, Drayson is a donor to the Labour Party and was given a peerage by the then UK prime minister Blair in controversial circumstances.

A quick recap - the controversy began when Drayson made a substantial donation to Labour while the government was deciding who should be awarded a smallpox vaccine contract. Drayson gave a further donation of half a million pounds to Labour just six weeks after the PM made him Lord Drayson. Controversially, the Blair government awarded Drayson's biotech company, PowderJect, the smallpox vaccine contract without any competition (See Corporate Watch here).

Some might remember that to highlight the issue campaigners were invited to purshase peerages and gain certificates of inauthenticity - see more here - I have the unofficial title Baron Booth of Bread Street.