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June 2009 - the month in pictures

A round-up of June's most compelling images from Greenpeace actions around the world.

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Potato power peddlers promote organic farming

Potato activists promoting ecological farming in Amsterdam

Mr Potato Head makes an appearance in Amsterdam

It sounds like something that would have appeared on the late, lamented Eurotrash but giant potatoes have been spotted recently cycling through the Netherlands. However, it isn't an offbeat continental cultural outing, but a reminder to the Dutch public about the importance of organic farming and the perils of GM technology.

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EU fudges GM potato vote

Yesterday, EU farm ministers voted on whether to approve the use of new GM crops including a variety of potato developed by chemical giant BASF. According to Reuters, they failed to reach a consensus which is good in the sense that the proposed crops weren't approved, but bad because the decision will now be passed back to the European Commission. The EC is heavily pro-GM so it's likely that all five crops under consideration will be approved with a nod and a wink.

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France bans Monsanto's GM maize

Sacre bleu. At the end of last week, French president Nicolas Sarkozy took a stand against biotech giant Monsanto and banned a strain of GM maize which has previously been grown by French farmers.

Their MON 810 variety - according to AFP, the only type of GM maize currently being grown in France - has been withdrawn after a committee of scientists, farmers and politicians raised doubts over its continued use. Advocating the precautionary principle, Sarkozy invoked an EU clause to stop Monsanto's maize being grown.

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Consumers say, 'We don't want GM food'; EU says, 'What, not even in organic food?'

Organic vegetablesA bizarre decision has been made by the EU to increase the maximum limit of GM material allowed in organic food, and effectively legitimise widespread GM contamination.

You might be alarmed to think that any GM ingredients end up in organic food, and you're right to be so. The previous maximum limit of 0.1 per cent was set simply because that was the lowest level that food could accurately be tested for GM contamination.

The new limit is 0.9 per cent, the same that applies to non-organic food, and while this might not sound like much, it does now mean that organic food can be polluted with much greater quantities of GM material before it has to be labelled with a warning. If organic food is tested and found to contain 0.8% GM contamination, it will be labeled as ‘GM free'.

This makes absolutely no sense. The success of organic foods has come about precisely because we trust them not to contain toxic chemicals and GM produce. As our campaigner Ben Ayliffe pointed out in the Independent, the shelves are groaning with organic food because it's what shoppers want, while GM food is conspicuous by its absence for the opposite reason.

For the EU to say it supports organic farming while increasing the level of contamination it can contain smacks of double standards. Do we see the lobbying fingerprints of the monolithic biotech companies all over this? I'll leave you to make up your own mind.

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Where has the GM Shoppers' Guide gone?

Iceland were one of the first supermarkets to remove GM ingredients from their own-brand products

The Guide was produced in 2003 as part of our campaign to remove GM ingredients from our food, allowing shoppers to see which products were GM-free and which ones weren't.

It was an enormous success and proved extremely popular. Covering a wide range of foods, including top brands and own-brands, products were colour coded to show whether your shopping trolley was free of GM ingredients or not.

As part of a massive consumer backlash against GM food, most supermarkets and food manufacturers stopped using GM ingredients in their food. In addition, subsequent EU legislation means that all products containing GM material need to be clearly labelled, which has made our Guide pretty much defunct.

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What you can do about GM Food

Genetically modified organisms shouldn't be released into the environment, full stop.