[BCFSN] FW: March 10 EVENT: Pollinators and People in the City

[Pamela Zevit Adamah Consultants]

Hello all,
some of you may have heard of the controversial conference that the United
Nations Food and Ag Organization is putting on in Rome. See below for a
civil society response that includes organizations La Via Campesina, GRAIN
and ETC Group.

in good food,
Abra

Abra Brynne
Director, Engagement & Policy
BC Food Systems Network
abra at bcfsn.org
Ph: 250.352.5342 // mobile: 250.777.2480
Skype: abra.brynne
I am in the office: tuesday, wednesday and thursday.
www.bcfsn.org

Please consider supporting us <http://bcfsn.org/donate/>.

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Corporate vision of the future of food promoted at the UN Published on
Monday, 15 February 2016 10:37 Press release – La Via Campesina, ETC and
Grain


More than 100 civil society organizations raise alarm about FAO
biotechnology meeting

(Rome, Monday 15 February, 2016) Just when the biotech companies that make
transgenic seeds are merging, the corporate vision of biotechnology is
showing up at FAO. At today’s opening of the three-day International
symposium on agricultural biotechnologies convened by the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome, more than 100
civil society and social movement and organizations (CSOs) from four
continents have issued a statement denouncing both the substance and
structure of the meeting, which appears to be another attempt by
multinational agribusiness to redirect the policies of the UN agency toward
support for Genetically-engineered crops and livestock.

The global peasant and family farm movement, La Via Campesina, invited CSOs
to sign the letter when the symposium’s agenda became public.  Two of the
FAO keynote speakers are known proponents of GMOs, and the agenda and side
events over the three days include speakers from the Biotechnology Industry
Organization (a biotech trade group in the USA), Crop Life International
(the global agrochemical trade association), DuPont (one of the world’s
largest biotech seed companies) and CEVA (a major veterinary medicine
corporation), among others. FAO has only invited one speaker or panellist
openly critical of GMOs.  Worse, one of the two speakers at the opening
session is a former assistant director general of FAO who has pushed for
so-called Terminator seeds (GMO seeds programmed to die at harvest time
forcing farmers to purchase new seeds every growing season), in opposition
to FAO’s own public statements. The second keynoter’s speech is titled,
"Toward Ending the Misplaced Global Debate on Biotechnology" – suggesting
that the FAO symposium should be the moment for shutting down biotech
criticism.

In convening the biased symposium, FAO is bowing to industry pressure that
intensified following international meetings on agroecology hosted by FAO
in 2014 and 2015.  The agroecology meetings were a model of openness to all
viewpoints, from peasants to industry. But the biotech industry apparently
prefers now to have a meeting they can control.  This is not the first time
FAO has been drawn into this game. In 2010, FAO convened a biotechnology
conference in Guadalajara, Mexico, that blocked farmers from its organizing
committee, and then tried to prevent their attendance at the conference
itself.

"We are alarmed that FAO is once again fronting for the same corporations,
just when these companies are talking about further mergers amongst
themselves, which would concentrate the commercial seeds sector in even
fewer hands" the CSO statement denounces.

It is clear, according to the Civil Society Statement, that industry wants
to use FAO to re-launch their false message that genetically engineered
crops can feed the world and cool the planet, while the reality is that
nothing has changed on the biotech front. GMOs don't feed people, they are
mostly planted in a handful of countries on industrial plantations for
agrofuels and animal feed, they increase pesticide use, and they throw
farmers off the land. Transnational biotech companies are trying to patent
the planet's bodiversity, which shows that their main interest is to make
enormous profits, and not to guarantee food security or food sovereignty.
The industrial food system that these companies promote is also one of the
main drivers of climate change. Confronted with the rejection of GMOs by
many consumers and producers, the industry is now inventing new and
possibly dangerous breeding techniques to genetically modify plants,
without calling them GMOs. In doing so, they are trying to avoid current
GMO regulations and trick consumers and farmers.

The agroecology activities were much closer to the way that FAO should act,
the Statement points out, "as a centre for knowledge exchange, without a
hidden agenda on behalf of a few." Why does FAO now limit itself again to
corporate biotechnology and deny the existence of peasant technologies? FAO
should support the peasant technologies, that offer the most innovative,
open source, and the effective pathway to ending hunger and malnutrition.
It is time to stop pushing a narrow corporate agenda, says Civil Society.
"The vast majority of the world's farmers are peasants, and it is peasants
who feed the world. We need peasant-based technologies, not corporate
biotechnologies."

"It is high time that FAO puts an end to biopiracy and to its support for
genetically modified crops, which only serve to allow a handful of
transnational companies to patent and to grab all the existing
biodiversity," said La Via Campesina leader Guy Kastler. "On the contrary,
FAO should support farmers' organisations and researchers engaged in
collaborative plant breeding in the service of food sovereignty and peasant
agroecology”.

The statement and the list of signatories can be downloaded here:
http://goo.gl/mjaZor

Media contacts in Rome:

Guy Kastler and other Via Campesina leaders

Phone numbers: + 39 329 665 53 44 and +39 331 188 64 35

E-mail: lvcweb at viacampesina.org
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