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Oxfordshire takes steps to become GM-free

Local farmers and beekeepers with a giant bee outside County Hall before the meetingOxfordshire County Council voted for a motion on Tuesday 4 November that called on national Government to abandon plans for commercial growing of genetically modified crops in the UK. The Council also ordered an urgent investigation of legal means to stop the commercial growing of GM crops in Oxfordshire. The motion followed a call by Oxfordshire farmers, beekeepers, women’s groups and the general public for the use of European Union legislation to protect Oxfordshire from commercial GM growing, as well as other GM-Free policies.

The adopted motion was proposed by Councillor Anne Purse with a series of amendments by Councillor Craig Simmons to strengthen it. Members of all parties voted for the motion by 40 votes to 9. The motion stopped short of adopting many of the policies needed by a GM-Free local authority. Specifically the motion did not require new leases for the County Council’s few tenant farmers to exclude growing GM crops. The Council also failed to adopt GM-Free policies in its provision of services generally e.g. catering in care homes. However it decided to ‘take all reasonable steps to keep school meals free of genetically modified food’.

Coucillors, farmers and beekeepers outside County HallThe Council was presented with over a hundred letters from Oxfordshire farmers and growers at its meeting which called for the growing of GM crops in Oxfordshire to be prohibited. Oxfordshire farmer Charles Bennett from Sandy Lane Farm near Thame presented them. The Council also heard evidence of the adverse effects of GM crops on North American farmers from Hugh Warwick, an independent journalist and Oxford resident who wrote the Soils Association’s report ‘Seeds of Doubt’. 

Andrew Wood, Food Campaigner for Oxford Friends of the Earth said
“There was a fair amount of GM fudge in the adopted motion but the Council is taking positive steps. We’ll see if its concern is backed up with real action in the next few weeks and months. Other Councils are protecting their Counties from commercial GM growing, Oxfordshire needs to follow their example as soon as possible.”
 

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