Posted on 18-11-2002

Thousands March For GE-FreeNZ

Thousands of New Zealanders marched through Auckland city this afternoon to
demand the government prevent irreversible contamination of the environment
through the release of GE organisms and for GE to be regulated to ensure an
ethical biotechnology strategy for the country.

Media observers estimated the crowd to be 10,000 and of a similar size to
last September's GE-Free rally. After the march through Queen St. to
Albert Park people gathered for performances by musicians including the
Topp Twins and speakers from science, academia, business, and Mothers
against GE. Waitakere Mayor and former Labour Party president Bob Harvey
also made an impassioned speech supporting the vision of GE-Free food and
environment.

Jon Carapiet, a spokesperson for the Auckland GE-Free Coalition and GE-Free
NZ (in food and environment) told the crowd that warnings were coming from
scientists and doctors and that humanity itself was now threatened by the
insane push to clone human beings. "The only way to protect our families,
our land and future generations is to control GE: to keep it contained, and
where a use is found to be unethical - for it not to be done ," he said. Mr
Carapiet also called on the biotechnology industry and government to listen
to the voice of the people and to work together with Mothers, Maori and
other community groups on a way forward that respects human and community
values, the environment and peoples' right to choose. "We know from
Mexico's contaminated corn crops, the superweeds emerging in America and
the collapse in exports, where the line must be drawn for these
experimental organisms: they must be kept contained," he said. "We know it
is not ethical to pollute our land step by step so that there is no longer
any choice to avoid "a little bit" of GE contamination in our food," said
Mr Carapiet. There was also a warning that release of GE threatened New
Zealand's economy by destroying the opportunity for future generations to
produce GE-Free food when the world is crying out for clean food.

Speakers were critical of particularly cruel experiments: the nightmare of
human cloning, knocking out genes in animals , and inserting human genes
into cows when the Royal Commission said not to use food animals in this
way and to look first for alternative research.

The global impact of GE was also a theme of speeches at the rally. "It is
not ethical to force the hungry of the world to eat untested experimental
food, or to force farmers into slavery to seed corporations," said Mr
Carapiet."Terminator genes that produce barren seed that will never grow
are a threat to food security and humanity's inheritance."

Bio-Piracy by companies stealing indigenous people's knowledge of plants
and animals was also heavily criticised along with concerns about patents
that force the sick to pay a license fee to be tested for some forms of
cancer. Corporates were also urged to accept full liability for their
speculation into GE rather than expecting the Public to cover costs of
damage because insurance companies refuse to. "There is a future for
ethical biotechnology in this country- but for our food and environment the
future is GE-Free," he said.