Common Protest against GMO Bill

19.03.2004

Friday 19th March, LALIT was one of eight organizations that sent a protest letter to the Minister of Agriculture and Food Technology, Nando Bodha. The other seven organizations who signed are the Institute for Consumer Protection, Ledikasyon pu Travayer, Rodrigues Government Employees Association, Muvman Liberasyon Fam, Mouvement pour L'Autosuffisance Alimentaire, ABAIM and the Federation of Pre-School Playgroups.

The Common Protest letter has also been sent out to the press and radio. In it the eight organizations call for the withdrawal from the National Assembly of the Bill on Genetically Modified Organisms, and the introduction of legislation that conforms to the "precautionary principle".

The common declaration notes that there is enough food produced to feed everyone on mother earth, and that the problem is one of the politics of distribution. It also notes that it is mainly private multinational companies that are commercialising GM plants, and that their only concern is with profit. In addition, they are bent on producing crops that are resistent to their various poisons like herbicides, or that turn the plant into a poison like an insecticide. In addition, the signatories say that not only is agriculture contaminated much more widely than previously predicted, but that nature itself is liable to be genetically contaminated. The risks are unpredictable, and recent studies in the UK show an increase in allergies when people are exposed to GM plants.

The signatories say that Mauritius has the rare opportunity to make itself into a GMO-FREE series of islands, producing food organically.
Copies of the Common Declaration, in Kreol, can be got from the signatories.