European tour kicks off
The European leg of the GE campaign has kicked off, a press conference and an open evening were held on the Esperanza in the port of Nantes in France over the weekend.
During the press conference Lindsay Keenan (the Esperanza's international GE campaigner)and I outlined the importance of the new EU regulation on labelling and traceability of GE food and feed. The regulation that comes into force on April 18 throughout the EU means that labelled products are already appearing on our shelves. However this does not include animal feed.
We explained to the journalists that as Animal feed will also have to be labelled, it should give consumers leverage to request that the animal products they buy (butter, milk, eggs
) should also be labelled to prove that they come from non GE fed animals.
We are using the Esperanza in Europe to highlight and denounce the imports of GE soybean from USA, Argentina and now Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil when consumers clearly reject GMOs. The Esperanza is in Nantes now, because it is the entry point for a big portion of soybean that is imported into France for the feed industry of the West of the country.
In the evening, a the public was invited on board and about 30 people showed up, with a high interest in learning more about GE food and possible actions to get rid of it. After the conference in a cold evening, the public, campaigners, volunteers and the crew socialized for a moment in the mess. It was a nice sense of a community looking for common ways to fight against GE.
Most were willing to engage more actively to reject GMOs in their food and crops and it confirmed for us that through public engagement we will keep GMOs at bay in France and the rest of Europe.
The Esperanza has now left France and is now making its way to Spain.
Arnaud Apoteker, GE Campaigner, France
