EU successfully undermines Ireland as a GMO-free zone

Tuesday, March 08, 2011 by: Kimberly Hartke, Publicist
Tags: GMOs, Ireland, health news

(NaturalNews) Weston A Price Foundation, a nutrition education non-profit, highly recommends butter as a healthy food, particularly grass fed, raw butter, which is hard to come by in America. Because of the lack of availability of locally produced artisan butter, many of our members (and those they have influenced) buy imported butter from countries like Ireland, which have high standards for animal husbandry.

My own mother has been buying Kerrygold ever since I sung the nutritional praises of grassfed butter!

Until recently the Irish government was in coalition with the Green Party, and there was a policy to declare the republic of Ireland a GMO-free zone.

However, in February 2011, the Irish Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Brendan Smith: "confirmed that Ireland has altered its voting position and will support a number of proposals from the EU Commission aimed at authorizing the placing on the market of food, food ingredients and feed containing, consisting of, or produced from genetically modified maize and cotton. Ireland will also support EU Commission proposals to introduce a tolerance for the low level presence of, as yet, unauthorized GM varieties in imports of animal feed."

I weep for Ireland, for both my husband and I are of Irish descent, and I have relatives there who are farmers. But the German side of me wants to fight for Ireland's purity from GM crops and the pesticide pollution that inevitably follows. I have seen the lush rolling hills and small farms that will be ripped up to put in large monocropping operations. Please read Sir Julian Rose's article, The Battle to Save the Polish Countryside, which describes what happened in the UK when they joined the EU:

"...the ripping up of 35,000 miles of hedge rows; the loss of 30 percent of native farmland bird species, 98 percent of species-rich hay meadows, thousands of tons of wind- and water-eroded top-soil; and the loss from the land of around fifteen thousand farmers every year, accompanied by a rapid decline in the quality of food."

Ireland urgently needs international help to put pressure on the government to reverse this stance.

Irish products such as Kerrygold butter are marketed in America and elsewhere as being natural and grass-fed. However, thanks to there being no legal requirement to declare the use of GM animal feed, it is being widely reported that an increasing percentage of animal feed in Ireland comes from GMO sources, and I think Weston Price consumers will be shocked to learn has no stance on GMOs.

Until now, I'm sure it wasn't thought necessary.

What You Can Do
Contact Kerrygold/The Irish Dairy Board, and the Irish Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food; to let them know that the reputation of exported Irish foods is under threat by the recent pro-GM stance, in particular with the Irish-American community (which is of massive importance to the Irish economy). Let them know that they will be risking international boycott if they do not take the necessary action to keep Ireland and its food chain GMO free.

Send Your Emails to:

Kerrygold/Irish Dairy Board: [email protected]

Brendan Smith: [email protected]

Send Your Emails to:

Kerrygold/Irish Dairy Board: [email protected]

Brendan Smith: [email protected]

About the author:
by Kimberly Hartke, Publicist
Weston A. Price Foundation
Washington, D.C.
a 501c3 nutrition education non profit

Weston A. Price Foundation has over 13,000 members and 550 volunteer led local chapters, worldwide. Our mission is to restore nutrient dense foods to the human diet through education and activism. We promote getting to know your local farmer and supporting him with your food dollars!