March 2010

Visiting GE-free advocate leaves a cautionary message: protect your primary producers

 

 

 

 

http://gbweekly.co.nz/2010/3/24/visiting-ge-free-advocate-leaves-a-cautionary-message-protect-your-primary-producers

Visiting GE-free advocate leaves a cautionary message: protect your primary producers

GOLDEN BAY WEEKLY 25 March 2010

by Gerard Hindmarsh

Northland-based horticulturalist and GE-free lobbyist, Zelka Grammer, recently spent three weeks tramping her way through the backblocks of Kahurangi, coming out in Golden Bay to replenish her supplies and deliver a strong message to anyone that would listen:

Start protecting your organic and conventional primary producers by insisting TDC place a ban on land use involving genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

 

It’s not just hot air.

Zelka and her GE-Free Northland colleagues were instrumental in convincing nine Northland and Auckland councils to form the Working Party on GMO Risk Evaluation and Options, whose core function is protecting the regions’ existing (and what many perceive as valuable) GM-free status.

"The next step," says a confident Zelka, will be the implementation of a Regional Exclusion Zone for GMOs. It’s akin to what Golden Bay and Waiheke Island councils did in the late 1970s, when they declared themselves ‘Nuclear Free.’ People laughed back then, but that one became arguably one of this country’s most popular policies."