Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

Fair food for all Australians

Statement from the National Committee of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

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Over the past two days the National Committee of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) met for our annual mid-year retreat, an important gathering where we come together to review progress and renew commitments to our work as active optimists in the local and global food sovereignty movement. We are farmers and allies from across Australia, all committed to working collectively to democratically determine our own food and agriculture systems, and for everyone’s right to nourishing and culturally-appropriate food produced in ethical and ecologically-sound ways.

We reviewed our strategies to continue working with state governments to reform the planning schemes to better enable small-scale agroecological farming. We celebrated our victories in Victoria, where we are nearing agreement on much-improved land use guidelines that acknowledge the lower risk of small-scale pastured livestock farming compared with our industrial intensive counterparts. We also celebrated the Victorian Government’s recognition of AFSA as the voice for small-scale farmers, and their public commitment to working with us, as well as to the new Artisanal Agriculture and Produce program launched by Minister for Agriculture Jaala Pulford at Cloud 9 Winery recently, which will provide $2 million in funding to support small-scale farms.

We also look forward to working more closely with the NSW State Government as they work through their planning reforms, and by participating in the upcoming hearings for the Parliamentary Inquiry into Fresh Food Pricing.

Internationally, we have been very busy with our comrades in the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) at the General Assembly in South Africa in March, renewing our solidarity and global strategies to radically transform the food system. We were delighted to have the Director General of the Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) request a copy of the 2015 book Fair Food, which has contributions from many of our current and former committee members, and his subsequent gracious expression of appreciation for our contributions at the Asia Pacific Regional Conference in Fiji in April. And we look forward to participating in the regional conference of La Via Campesina in Timor Leste at the end of July.

The Committee developed positions on the increasingly topical subjects of high tech food such as lab-grown meat and a sugar tax that we will test with all members at our annual Food Sovereignty Convergence in Canberra on 15/16 October 2018. We reject the productivist paradigm and specious ‘feed the world’ narratives from philanthrocapitalists such as Richard Branson and Bill Gates (and their partners – Cargill and Tyson – two of the biggest industrial meat producers in the world) that there is a need for technocratic solutions to technology-driven problems.

We renewed our strength to fight all undemocratic false solutions to the problems of industrial food systems, including the continued rise of genetic modification, and our commitment to promote seed sovereignty and water sovereignty for all.

The Committee discussed and lauded the efforts of small-scale livestock farmers across Australia who are taking control of the means of production and building micro-abattoirs to close the loop on the entirety of a highest welfare system of raising animals. From Queensland to Victoria, Tasmania to WA, farmers are building abattoirs on their farms and cooperatively in their regions to regain control of the value chain and ensure their animals are slaughtered in the most humane way possible.

Some of the AFSA National Committee members are today enroute to the annual gathering of small-scale agroecological farmers and allies – Deep Winter – where hundreds will come together to share knowledge farmer to farmer, and nourish each other as we feast on the collective bounty of delicious ethical and ecologically-sound produce.

We look forward to the second annual Slow Meat Australia Symposium to be held in Daylesford, Victoria again in September, where farmers, chefs, butchers and allies will discuss, debate, and devour the movement to help everyone eat better meat, less often.

The year will culminate with the fourth annual Food Sovereignty Convergence in Canberra on 15/16 October, where Australia’s leading activists will share their successes and failures, their worries and wishes, and again renew our commitment to working democratically towards a food sovereign future.

It is no longer enough to simply vote with your dollar, nor even to grow food ethically and ecologically. We must be more than connected to food production – there is so much at stake that we must collectivise, mobilise and act for the future we want to see and be. Join us!

Viva la revolución!

IPC Statement from Paarl (Cape Town)

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This statement was written by the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) in Paarl (Cape Town), South Africa, at the General Meeting in March 2018.

We, the representatives of peasants and family farmers, landless, rural women and rural youth, fishers and fish workers, agricultural workers, hunters and gatherers, pastoralists and herders, Indigenous Peoples, and food consumers from all over the world and who are all members of the IPC, met in Paarl, South Africa to take our struggle for food sovereignty and agroecology forward. Our meeting took place during the worst drought in Cape Town ever recorded, only a few weeks ahead of Day Zero, which marks the day when the taps run dry. We stand in solidarity with the masses of poor and marginalized people in Cape Town whose health is at risk as access to clean drinking water is jeopardized – just as in many other territories. The water crisis marks just one of many of the serious threats we are confronted with all over the world because of neoliberal policies, extractivism and other disrespectful relations with nature leading to the protracted climate crisis.

We pay tribute to our comrade and fellow fighter Kuria Gathuru who passed away in September 2017.

We, as small-scale food producers and consumers – including urban poor, marginalised communities, refugees, displaced peoples, and those living in occupied territories – rely on our land and water territories as well as on access to and control over land, water, native seeds and our animal breeds to produce and access healthy, affordable and nutritious food and to maintain our cultures and livelihoods. We also need special focus to protect the open pollination of seeds and for bees and other insects and protection for our bee keepers. The multiple crisis we are facing today – including degradation and loss of our lands, pollution of oceans, dwindling access to water, and the advancement of reactionary governments , corporate capture of institutions and governance structures, capitalist patriarchy, extractive industries, xenophobia and anti-migrant policies, growing economic inequality and climate change – is a threat to our human rights and to the planet.

Over the past few years the food sovereignty movement has made many achievements. We played a key role in the reform of the United Nations (UN) Committee on World Food Security (CFS). We have succeeded in ensuring the endorsement of UN instruments: In 2012, the CFS endorsed the International Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forest, and in 2014 the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) endorsed the International Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication. 2014 was also the year when FAO decided to establish a department to advance the agroecology agenda, and in 2016 the CFS adopted an innovative monitoring mechanism to follow the implementation of all policy decisions taken at the CFS. We, the members of the IPC played a critical role in all these processes and we remain committed to work with FAO and the CFS in good spirit and on a non-negotiable human rights basis, especially for the right to food and nutrition, to ensure continued implementation of these instruments while defending their true meaning .

The rights of women to participate in decision making spaces remain compromised in a world that is still dominated by patriarchal forces. We recognise the central role of women in food sovereignty and agroecology in all our constituencies, and we commit to fight for women’s equal rights with emphasis on the right to participate in decision-making process at all levels. Feminism is at the core of our struggle to end all forms of violence against women and to eliminate patriarchy. In a similar vein, rural youth remain largely politically marginalized in society. We commit to strengthening the autonomy of women and youth and continue our struggle for equity and equal participation.

The rights of Indigenous Peoples are inherent and inalienable. They cannot be taken away by new laws, yet, we witness increased violation of the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous territories are unlawfully seized by transnational corporations – often with the consent and complicity of state authorities – to satisfy their greed for nature for profit. We stay committed to defend the rights of Indigenous Peoples and continue our struggles in the spaces where we are present, including the United Nations.

Transnational corporations (TNCs), including agribusinesses, finance corporations, extractive and energy companies, continue the plunder of nature and heating our planet. Their capitalist and extractivist business models are transforming nature into economic and financial assets. TNCs are fueled by the WTO and Free Trade Agreements, opening the door for exploitation and destruction of nature in foreign countries, and to land and ocean grabbers. Together with governments pursuing fast economic gains at the expense of the people, the road is paved for dispossession of people from their territories. Witnessing criminalization, imprisonment and even assassination of human rights and environmental defenders, we stand in solidarity with all those who face violence when defending their communities and nature.

Climate change is one of the major challenges of our time and it compels us to action. We experience more frequent droughts but also severe flooding due to heavy rains, and both have tragic effects on our ability to produce food and feed our peoples and maintain our cultural traditions and livelihoods. Diminishing access to water is both the result of climate change and the enormous volumes of this precious resource used by agribusiness and energy corporations. The solutions to mitigate climate change put forward by our governments fail to address the underlying causes and continue to allow the biggest polluters – including agribusinesses, energy and mining companies – to continue heating our planet. The mitigation mechanisms of the the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – including REDD+, Blue Carbon and Climate Smart Agriculture that are also promoted by FAO – are false solutions. Real solutions to stop climate change are rooted in peoples’ access to and control of land and water and promoting agroecology, nature restoration and water retention landscapes. We will continue our struggle to advance our solutions in all the spaces where we are present, including the FAO, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Human Rights Council.

As a last resort, when life offers no alternatives because of dispossession from our territories or climate disasters, we have to resist through migration. However, even under these circumstances, we are being criminalized in the countries where we seek shelter and better lives. Justice is urgently needed, and we condemn the policies and inhumane treatment of immigrants all over the world who endure sexual harassment, slavery and imprisonment.

To ensure that our voices from the grass roots level are heard and our experiences are taken into consideration in decision-making, we will combine our struggles at the global level with increased focus on governance at local, national and regional levels. To take on these challenges, we commit to empowerment and improved communication in and between our movements on our concrete existing solutions. Real alternatives to the current food system already exist both locally and internationally through agroecological production, social solidarity economy that includes territorial markets, direct relationships between producers and consumers, cooperatives and participatory community-led governance mechanisms and policies.

We are acutely aware, that many governments around the world reduce their funding to the UN institutions and that many of these, including the FAO and the CFS, are working under increasing pressure. We are also aware that corporations and philanthropic foundations take advantage of this situation by supporting UN programmes financially and thereby buying political influence. It is therefore no surprise that funding for social movements is dwindling and that our space for participation is shrinking. As a response, we commit to advance our efforts to mobilize resources and push governments to implement public policies that are rooted in human rights, in particular the right to food and nutrition, as well as the extension support for agroecological production.

We commit to building our food sovereignty movement and to empowering our front line communities to be stronger and take their struggles to all spaces where key political decisions are taken. To address the challenges we are confronting, we will continue to work with FAO, the CFS and the Convention on Biological Diversity and to work together in other institutional and strategic spaces, including the Human Rights Council and the Alternative World Water Forum.

Amandla! Awethu! – Power to the people!

Signatory organisations:
HIC/HLRN
WFFP
WFF
IITC
LVC
MIJARC
Urgenci
FIMARC
Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance
IPACC

IPC General Meeting Report

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Tammi Jonas, AFSA President

Katarina Munksgaard, International Liaison

The International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) consists of a plethora of civil society organisations from all over the world that are all social movement led. They are representatives of peasant and family farmers, landless, rural women and rural youth, fishers and fish workers, agricultural workers, hunters and gatherers, pastoralists and herders, indigenous peoples and food consumers. Since 2003, the role of the IPC has been to provide the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) with expert advice, general input as well as demands relating to the FAO mandate on the right to food. The IPC does this through the principles of food sovereignty.

The various working groups within the IPC have successfully partnered with the FAO in developing voluntary guidelines for member countries on topics such as sustainable small scale fisheries, agroecology and land tenure. In the past decade, the IPC has supported civil society’s engagement with other processes as well, such as the Civil Society Mechanism (CSM) that relates to the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS), and with the UN Human Rights Council on a Declaration on the Rights of Peasants. IPC members across the globe have worked for many years to secure recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples and their right to self-determination.

The IPC emphasise the fact that food sovereignty is a prerequisite for true food security. Agroecological farming is promoted as the practical solution that can aid in achieving this. The goal of the IPC is to influence local and global policies, forge networks and solidarity among allies within the movement, and to have strength in numbers. AFSA has been a member of the IPC since 2013 and has attended the last three general meetings.

The 2018 general meeting of the IPC was held near Cape Town in the regional town of Paarl, South Africa from the 12th to the 17th of March 2018 and attended by delegates from all regions of the globe. AFSA President Tammi Jonas and International Liaison Katarina Munksgaard attended the meetings on behalf of AFSA. The FAO’s commitment to supporting civil society’s engagement extends to funding delegates’ travel and accommodation to attend the general assemblies as well as the FAO conferences and symposia, such as the Asia Pacific Regional Conference coming up in Fiji this week.

At the meeting in Paarl we heard harrowing reports from our comrades in Cape Town and surrounding areas on the imminent water crisis they are facing and the tight water restrictions currently enforced. The issue is complex, but a three-year drought and mismanaged water allocations for water hungry export industries are largely to blame for dams being at a record low. Poor and rural people are expected to suffer most when the town runs out of water. We discussed the parallels between countries such as egregious government support for export commodity crops – cut flowers in South Africa and cotton here in Australia – that are literally running our rivers dry.

We also listened in horror and quiet shame to accounts of how African livelihoods are being destroyed by extractive industries mining sand, minerals and coal run by Australian companies. One comrade told us in detail how their traditional fishing grounds have been ruined by sand mining. Others told us of gas and oil exploration with seismic testing on shorelines that ruin marine life and ecosystems. Destruction of wetland and restrictions on estuary access areas directly impact coastal communities as do desalination plants. Gold mines and plantations disrupt ecosystems and the traditional livelihoods that depend on them. These stories seldom reach Australia. Our comrades in Africa urge us to bring attention to these issues of corporate (ir)responsibility of Australian companies operating overseas through our channels and put pressure on the responsible parties whenever we can.

During the five full days of meetings, everyone sat in a semi-circle and live translation was made available in English, French, Korean and Spanish by the tireless effort of purely volunteer interpreters committed to the food sovereignty agenda. Microphones were passed around and equity was ensured between men and women speaking.

Each morning a different group was tasked with performing the “mística” –a ritual of sharing of our different cultures in song, dance, theatre and music, but also a ritual of acting out current food and land related issues and their solutions through community and food sovereignty. It is an excellent way to prepare for full days of seated meetings, and a tradition of all meetings of La Via Campesina that was a welcome addition to the IPC’s schedule.

The discussions at the meetings largely centred around the topics of communication, the strengthening of the existing working groups and formulating strong strategies for continued effective engagement with – and influence of – the FAO and other processes where food sovereignty can be promoted. The successes of the IPC were celebrated and highlighted but the group also voiced concerns over conservative voices getting stronger in governments and other policy spaces.

For the IPC organisationally, there were discussions of gender and age balance, internal communication, skill development, a women’s declaration and the need for a separate Women’s Assembly as well as the urgency of including water and climate change into the discussions of every working group.

All the regions had separate meetings discussing their internal functioning and how they are planning on cooperating with the central secretariat for the next two years. The Asia Pacific group committed to improving communication through trialling the project management app Slack, which the AFSA National Committee already uses to great effect. Tammi was nominated to sit on the Asia Pacific regional facilitating committee to represent the Pacific for the next two years.

On the last day of the meetings, the official statement of the IPC was workshopped democratically in a plenary with over 50 activists, and is currently being ratified by member organisations before being released for public distribution.

On day six, the delegates went on a field trip to learn about the fisher community in Hout Bay. Here, they are facing various challenges including restrictive fishing regulations that largely favour the big commercial fishing industry (fishing permits and quotas, but also the establishment of a Marine Protection Area that severely hinders small-scale traditional fisheries); discrimination and exploitation at the fish markets; limited access to surrounding natural resources; high unemployment; lack of decent accommodation and high cost of hiring fishing boats. Women also face challenges within the fisher community as most of them are not allowed by men to fish. In cases where men allow them to fish, women are limited to permits for low value fish.

We came away from the meetings mentally and physically exhausted, but full of a joyful sense of solidarity and active optimism. We renew AFSA’s commitment to raise awareness of the seriousness of the struggles of our global comrades, and also of shared struggles relating to food sovereignty that are happening everywhere to varying degrees. Australian companies abroad are having severe negative impacts on the livelihoods and food sovereignty of small-scale farmers and fishers, and indigenous people around the world, especially in the Global South. Our government is considered one of what they call ‘the evil three’ in UN processes (along with the US and Canada) as it serves to protect corporate interests over the rights of the people. We see a major part of our role in the international movement is to put pressure on our government and Australian-owned companies to be better global citizens, and to do that we need all of you to join us and work collectively for radical food system transformation.

Viva la revolución!

 

You know it’s women’s work when everyone is working together

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You could see our diversity in the hodge podge, mismatched layers of clothing worn to protect us from the record-setting temperatures that never climbed above -8C, and later in our dorm rooms at night as the layers came off, leaving us as we were, stripped back to basics and a dozen tongues.

We gathered from 10 countries, with more than 10 languages, in the frozen heart of Seoul to share experiences, to globalize the struggle and to globalize hope, and while some of what we heard and saw caused collective despair, our solidarity rang of hopefulness and joy.

We farm, we cook, and we feed the world. We are peasant women farmers** of Asia Pacific.

This meeting was the second women’s workshop of La Via Campesina (LVC) in Southeast and East Asia*. We gathered in recognition of the struggles women particularly face as peasants – women are overwhelmingly the victims of domestic and institutional violence, have shamefully low rates of land ownership—in spite of constituting more than 50% of the farmers in the region—and earn as little as half what our male counterparts earn. Women bear the burden of the vast majority of domestic labour, in addition to our labour on farms and in other forms of employment.

 

In solidarity with the women who shared their stories, some will not be named here, as they are targets of military governments.

We heard that in Thailand, whole villages have been displaced by the current military government. One village is trying to re-group so that they might go back to producing food collectively as they used to do, and where food is produced collectively, all profits go towards their shared struggle. When the military confronts them, their strategy is to put the women in front, as it reduces the incidence and levels of violence. Women are therefore the first to be injured, but fewer are hurt if women lead the way.

We listened as our Filipino sister told us that their current President openly endorses rape as a tool of war, telling Filipino soldiers he would back them up if they raped women while enforcing martial law.

Every woman present had stories of unfair division of domestic labour – it was probably our biggest commonality – and it is so endemic that the Korean Women Peasants Association (KWPA – our wonderful hosts for the week) have been lobbying for free school lunches to support female farmers who struggle to find time to make lunch for their children.

The 60-year-old farmer from Taiwan Huang Hsiang told us that while she loves her mother dearly, she doesn’t want to be like her because she would rise at 3am every day to cook and feed chickens and cows, before going out to work in the fields with her husband, who woke at 5am after the domestic chores were done. Hsiang has done incredible work against land grabbing with the Taiwan Rural Front, and her own son now rises early to sweep the floor and feed the baby.

In addition to our struggles as women farmers, we heard many organisations share that women are leading the way in saving seeds and preserving genetic diversity in agriculture across our region. And they are collectivizing and working together for change – not only for feminist reform, but also for food sovereignty and particularly agroecology.

On the third and final day of our meeting we trundled three hours southwards on a bus to visit Sisters Garden – a women farmers’ producer cooperative that’s been operating for nearly a decade. As we feasted on the regional specialty of dried persimmons, we listened to the story of how they came together to grow food that is clean, safe and good to sell directly to people in the cities. They coordinate their growing as best they can to maximize diversity in their boxes (a seasonal box for a family of four is USD$100/month), and make a range of ready-to-eat dishes for inclusion in the boxes, such as tofu, kimchi, dried persimmon and sticky rice cakes. A commission is taken from each farmer based on their profits to pay one staff member, and for maintenance and upgrades.

Once a week they gather at the processing and packing facility built with government support, and enjoy a communal lunch while planning next week’s boxes for 140 households. They also provide donation boxes for organisations such as those providing support for victims of sexual violence. The deep camaraderie and sheer joyfulness of the 13 female farmer members was palpable, strongly affirming the benefits of working as a community towards a common and noble goal.

On our field trip we also visited a community that is both devastated and galvanized by the US military’s presence established through the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system. The elders of Seongju have been leading the fight against the military installation for these past two years, rising early to form a human blockade by 6am every day – even in temperatures as low as the -20C we experienced during our visit. The military police have intervened on multiple occasions, leading to injuries that included smashing one woman in her eighties’ teeth to the extent that she chose to keep her face mask on during our visit.

Most of the women we met are in their eighties – tiny, hunched, but fierce and committed women – who told us that ‘it doesn’t matter much for us, but what about our sons and daughters?’ These women have lived through the horrors of war, deaths of loved ones and abuse as ‘comfort women’, and they are certain that THAAD can only bring more war to their peaceful village. THAAD is ostensibly being built to protect South Korea and US interests from North Korea, but the villagers say it’s really to give the US another facility close to China and Russia as they gain power in the new world order.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the room as these brave women told us their stories and thanked us for bearing witness to their struggle, asking that we return home and share it with our countries.

While we are doing that, we are also thinking about how better to engage the elders of our own communities in our struggles – these powerhouses of experience and demonstrated will – something to work on in 2018.

Our Action Plan included a few very concrete items, such as a media release to promote and support the villagers fighting against THAAD, and a social media campaign to highlight and promote the work of women farmers on International Women’s Day on 8 March. We also spoke of the need for our organisations to do more to train women in food processing and better control of value chains – something we’ve taken seriously here at Jonai Farms for some years now with my regular training of female butchers and #meatgrrlsmonday. Another focus is to keep stepping up our work around agroecology, and acknowledge and support women’s efforts to save seeds, while promoting this work as essential for a food sovereign and delicious future.

For me personally, the week in South Korea with these remarkable women was a powerful motivator to do more to support the work of women farmers – explicitly and joyfully. And to speak out more against the ills of patriarchy’s contributions to capitalism and the subjugation of women in all walks of life.

United we stand, divided we fall. Or as Zainal reminded us, ‘unorganised good people will be marginalized by organized bad people.’

We farm, we cook, and we feed the world. We are peasant women farmers and we build the movement to change the world!

* Fair Food Farmers United is attached to this region until LVC sorts out our region now that we’ve joined the global movement of peasant farmers.

** The term ‘peasants’ has very different meanings around the world, but is the preferred label of smallholder farmers in the food sovereignty movement. I use the term respectfully here in a politics of solidarity – not appropriation – as advised by my comrades across the global south. I’ll write more on this in future.

La Via Campesina Regional Women’s Workshop in Seoul – 24-26 January 2018

Tammi Jonas, AFSA President

GM News

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Greens MP Mark Parnell's bill to extend the moratorium on growing GM crops in South Australia until 2025 has passed the Upper House. It is expected to pass the Lower House. Jay Weatherill's Labour Government is supportive of the ban. It creates a “significant price premium for our state’s farmers compared to GM crops grown in other states” and consumers benefit too.

Farmers in the US are suing Monsanto, the patent owner of most GM crops and the creator of Roundup. They claim to have developed cancer due to using the weedkiller. The court case is revealing internal Monsanto documents showing how they ghost write science, have paid scientists to promote their interests while appearing to be independent, are sabotaging regulation and are creating attacks on independent scientists and bodies who show their product causes harm.

Existing GM crops have failed but new GM techniques have been developed including gene editing or CRISPR. Three reviews into regulation are currently underway in Australia. The industry wants full deregulation meaning GM microbes, plants, animals, fish, trees and humans would require no oversight, pre-market testing, labelling or monitoring. The reviews are taking place over summer and it is essential that these techniques are regulated.

Join Friends of the Earth and help regulate new GM techniques on animals, plants, humans, crops, trees and microbes. ​

Three reviews on GM technologies in Australia will have huge effects on our food, health and environment:
  • Forums on the Review of the national Gene Tech Scheme are in Sydney and Adelaide this week and other capital cities later. Register here. This review has the potential to: remove the ability for States to have GM Moratoriums, remove GM labelling requirements, avoid any pre-market approval by using a product instead of process based regulation and allow GM contamination in Organic food.
  • OGTR review of the rules on new GMOs. Sign this petition to ask the Assistant Health Minister to regulate them. New GM techniques including CRISPR, RNA interference could be used to create GM animals, microbes, crop plants, fish, humans, trees etc. The Gene Technology Act 2000 defines gene technology as "any technique for the modification of genes or other genetic material" therefore all GM techniques and their products should be regulated. This review proposes deregulating the most popular new GM techniques. It would mean no pre-market testing, no register of what is GM and no labelling. Farmers would not know if the seed they are using was produced using these techniques or not. There is no history of safe use for these techniques. For example, CRISPR was first used for gene editing in 2013 yet it could be in our food, lives and environment with no oversight.These new techniques are as unpredictable and hazardous as the old GM. Scientists have stated that these techniques should be regulated as GM. IFOAM, the international organic body wants regulation as well. Last year the US Intelligence community’s annual worldwide threat assessment report found these new gene editing techniques to be “weapons of mass destruction and proliferation.” More information on these techniques are in this fact sheet and longer report here.
  • Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) is deciding whether to regulate new GM foods. FSANZ is conducting a review into whether it will require pre-market approvals for the new GM breeding techniques. It says there will be a public consultation before the review is completed mid 2018.
It is essential that the public has a voice in these discussions and that these techniques are strongly regulated.

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