Irish Green Party deputy leader Mary White has argued the case for making Ireland a no-go zone for genetically modified food.
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Speaking at the party convention in Cork, White said consumers were entitled to have concern over their food. “I don’t want my bread laced with folic acid – I don’t want my tomatoes spliced with the gene of a flounder fish and I don’t want my bananas straightened so that the globalisation of food is manipulated for big business and not in the interest of the consumer.”
Calls for end of CAP subsidies
The councillor for Carlow and Kilkenny also urged that control be removed from food processors and returned to farmers to prevent them throwing in the towel and exiting the business. White called for an end to subsidies that pay farmers not to farm: “We pay for the subsidies to grow grain that we don’t need. We pay for the slaughter for destruction scheme of cattle – healthy cattle which are destroyed because we have too many of them.
“There is something rotten at the heart of the Common Agricultural Policy.”
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By GlobalDataWhile voiced in rather more extreme terms than is often the case, White’s comments reflect recent statements from the UK’s Future of Farming and Food report, which advocates rewarding farmers for environmentally sound use of land, and the production of quality food, notablyorganic.
