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On Saturday, 1st December,
Bath FoE, complete with tiger, took part in a repeat ESSO boycott. This
time it was a joint campaign with Bath Greenpeace. Over 30 activists targeted
the London Road garage. Without obstructing the entrance or exit the garage
was effectively closed down for the forenoon. At midday we moved to the
city centre to distribute more leaflets and Greenpeace moved off to picket
the other 3 Esso garages in Bath.
Nationally, 306 Stop Esso actions took place with over 3000 people involved. Check out the Stop Esso campaign website www.stopesso.com for full details and more info.
Dave Searby
The Organics Targets Rally was held in London on 23 January to lobby MPs and Parliament to enact the Organics Food and Farming Targets Bill which sets a target of 30% of agricultural land to be farmed organically by 2010. Our MP Don Foster supports the Bill. Currently just 3% of British farmland is used organically and we are lagging behind our European partners. Britons are among the largest consumers of organic food, yet 70% is imported, a great loss to our beleaguered farming community and a loss to everyone's environment from transport pollution.
The Rally organisers asked supermarkets if they backed the target. ASDA, Booths, Coop, Iceland, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's and Waitrose said, yes. But Safeway said, no. What about Somerfield and Tesco, I wonder? It's worth asking.
Bath FoE took part in an apple and pear sourcing survey in the autumn which revealed that very few supermarkets stocked British apples and pears at the height of our season. Many do not mark the origin of produce. So when we say thanks for backing the organics target, we should ask the supermarkets to buy locally, or at least buy British, and certainly to mark the origin. A survey by the Food Standards Agency established that 70% of consumers prefer to buy British. Thus it is in the supermarkets' interest to do so too. It is probably worth pointing out to them that if they don't mark the origin, we have to assume it is not British, therefore less desirable.
Supermarkets are big business and they drive down farm prices, while charging us as much as ever. A government report exonerated them last year, declaring them competitive with one another. They are in the technical sense that they do not get together round a board room table and fix prices. But their prices for the same produce are remarkably similar. It is not so surprising once one knows that for certain produce, meat for example, several supermarkets will use the same buyer in a given area. No doubt that buyer is self-employed, therefore technically competitive.
It is worth adding to our congratulatory letters that we want British farmers to earn a living wage so that they can continue to produce the food we want and maintain their good stewardship of the countryside. As we are questioning the supermarkets' price mark-up, we should remind them that our desire for organic food is not tantamount to giving them a blank cheque to write any price they please for organics. We want organic food because it is healthier and health should be accessible to all. Everyone aspires to health and good food. We should remind supermarkets that their profits come primarily from our wallets and purses, whether those wallets and purses be fat or flat.
And while we have the supermarkets with us on organics, I think we should write a letter to Points West and any other print or broadcast media which is pushing the anti-organics button by doing taste tests in which an innocent, independent presenter can't tell the difference and therefore is not willing to cough up the extra loot for organics. Organics are healthier, whether or not they are tastier. We are investing in our long-term health when we buy organic. Less noxious chemicals thus less risk of cancer and allergy, no growth hormones in meat thus less risk of hormone disruption (gender change? in fish), no antibiotics in meat which destroy the effectiveness of antibiotics in humans. Who wants flu?
On 3rd November,
as the WTO held trade liberalisation talks in Qatar, 3,000 people from
around Europe. including three of us from Bath FoE, joined the Trade Justice
Parade in London. to march in protest against unfair world trade policies.
Terry
The push from governments, GM researchers and corporates is for ever-increasing food trade, the kind that has spread foot-and-mouth disease and BSE. Yet at present only 10% of food is traded internationally. It is hard to believe from the pronouncements from the European Union, the World Trade Organisation, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and others. Third world countries whose people are malnourished, export food here where we have an obesity problem. Those in the third world who gain from this trade are mostly the wealthy elite. The benefit is not passed down. Food is vital to life. It should be a local concern, not global.
Here FoE is targeting Food Poverty, which we have despite being a rich country, in conjunction with the Child Action Poverty Group and other community groups. My only concern about this new campaign is that this is rather segmented. Food is a matter of health for everyone, poor and rich. You do not have to be poor to have a poor diet, as anorexic wannabe models demonstrate. But if corporates make it too expensive to buy good food, thus leaving low income groups in the wealthy west with the dross, the general taxpayer, including corporations, are going to pick up the tab for healthcare. When I mention dross I am talking about the equivalent of the super-cheap US chicken, pumped full of antibiotics and growth hormones, which reaches volume maturity in an unnatural 39 days. The bones of the animal are insufficiently developed to support the weight of the flesh, and they break. Perhaps Europe has achieved this goal of 39 days by now. I used to be mollified that it could only manage 42. The result, either way, is a sick chicken, unable to stand up and waddle over to the water or feeding bowl in its dark barn. This is extreme cruelty to billions of birds and diseased food for millions of humans. But if you are poor and chicken is the cheapest meat at 39 cents a pound, like when I was living in the US, the money and the protein are a convincing argument.
We have to change this, if not this diseased meat and other unnatural foods will become the standard for most people, in an oblique way supported by the fashion industry. The US provides subsidies to agriculture - the GM terminator genes were developed with US Department of Agriculture money - and so does the European Union. The EU's Common Agricultural Policy is still the main EU budget item. FoE wants to scrap the CAP and it wants agriculture to be taken out of the World Trade Organisation's remit. Under WTO rules, safety regarding new agricultural products such as GM could become an illegal barrier to trade. But WTO rules are not written in stone, they are very much in the making right now. The EU is in the process of reforming the CAP. So this is an ideal time to lobby.
Farming is complex and the issues quite hard to understand in detail, even if you grew up in a farming community as I did. So it was especially useful to have four farmers present to give their experience and views of how problems could be resolved.
One of the best things about FoE is the energy and when you have a whole roomful of keen activists, all with a different angle on things, you have supercharge! I went up to London weary from too much work, and came away humming. So if you see a training day in your area of interest, go for it. Even if you think you don't need training. One of the selling points of the Real Food Training Day was "learn how to talk to farmers". I did that from the age of 10, but listening to how farming has changed, what is important now and all the urban views was a very good idea.
Susan Traill
Three sets of proposals
for the development of Western Riverside will be on display at the BRLSI,
Queen Square, in February and there will be a public meetng there on 1
March. with speakers from B&NES/SWRDA, Landscape Estates and CPRE.
I attended some of the CPRE meetings and contributed the following to their proposal:-
Provision should include:-
BedZED, the Beddington Zero Energy Development, in Beddington, Sutton (bedzed.org.uk) is an environmentally-friendly, energy-efficient mix of housing and work space providing a fine example of what can be done.
B&NES/SWRDA aim to produce an outline planning application in March. Contact them on 0117 910 5200 or email jeff.bishop@bdor.co.uk
Terry
Wood is a natural, renewable material, making it preferable to environmentally-costly alternatives such as steel or PVC. But bad forest management, high levels of timber waste and illegal logging mean that the world's forests are shrinking, endangering wildlife and communities, and putting more than 1,000 tree species under threat.
Some 275,000 tonnes of timber is currently wasted as a result of furniture manufacture and other joinery - so choosing wooden products carefully can make a real difference. The Good Wood Guide also includes a full list of species currently under threat, including details of where they are used.
I will arrange for envolve to get a copy.
Terry
Avon FoE in partnership
with the Council will be launching a series of composting collection trials
in Bath & North East Somerset this April. SITA Environmental Trust
has provided funding of £239,000 through Landfill Tax Credits for
the trials with 10% contributed by the Council.
The successful application for funding follows a study on composting collections by the Council's former Recycling Officer, David Mansell, who now works with Avon FoE. This included research on 25 existing schemes in the UK, a literature review of successful overseas collections and detailed proposals for the B&NES trials.
The trials will be operated for a year and test a range of options, including the collection of food (except cooked and meat), garden waste and cardboard for composting, providing kitchen storage bins with and without liners, using sacks and different sizes of collection bin, weekly and fortnightly services and operating fortnightly composting collections on alternating cycles with fortnightly refuse and recycling collections. Some collections will also be combined so that a single team and vehicle undertake both composting and recycling collections at the same time.
The trials will cover about 3,700 households and will be closely monitored to determine the costs and effectiveness of the different collection options.
They say that "Local Authorities have acknowledged the considerable benefit for both local communities and visitors alike and will provide the necessary finance to enable BW to fund the the works to accommodate cycling".
BW imposed the £15 pa towpath tax on the K&A canal on 1 July 1997. It was a try on to see if they could get away with taxing cycling nationwide along the 2,000 miles of their waterways. Following protests from cyclists galore and several mass trespass cycle rides (to which they turned a blind eye) they made a decision not to attempt to extend the permit scheme nationally.
BW admitted that they were making no money from the scheme. In fact it was clear that they were incurring a loss as at most only 5% of the 40,000 cyclists estimated to be using the towpath were actually paying the charge and two rangers were employed to encourage (they had no power to demand) payment.
It is to BW's discredit that they continued this tax for four and a half years,discouraging cyclists from using the canal towpath for both safe route commuting and leisure until all local authorities agreed to pay their ransom demand.
Terry
In future, before any new nuclear project can go ahead, the construction and other capital costs will have to be taken into account when deciding if the practice is economically beneficial.
The Court of Appeal ruled that it was only on the basis that no other MOX plants will be built in this country that the Government was entitled to ignore the £470 million already spent on the MOX plant.
Less than an hour after the Court of Appeal hearing ended last week, Patricia Hewitt announced in Parliament that MOX was to be transferred to a new "Liabilities Management Authority", (LMA) to take control of the UK's civil nuclear liabilities and associated assets. The LMA, rather than BNFL, will now be responsible for the Government's interest in the management of public sector civil nuclear liabilities. In particular, the LMA will take on responsibility for the whole Sellafield site including Sellafield MOX Plant. The reason for the restructuring was said by the DTI to be that BNFL's long term liabilities now exceed its assets. This means that BNFL is effectively bankrupt.
Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace will be writing to the Secretary of State for the Environment demanding that the decision to give MOX the go-ahead on the grounds of economic viability should be urgently reconsidered.
The MOX facility, which is intended to make nuclear reactor fuel out of plutonium and uranium for export around the world, will increase the risk of terrorists seizing nuclear material and increase the risk of Sellafield itself being targeted by terrorists. Plutonium is one of the most dangerous materials in the world. As little as 4kg is required to make a nuclear bomb. Far less is required to make a 'dirty bomb' - conventional explosive added to plutonium so it causes widespread contamination on detonation.
Earlier, the United Nations International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea rejected the Republic of Ireland's application for interim measures to halt the operation of Sellafield MOX plant prior to the full hearing of the case against the UK next year. However, in the tribunal's judgment, the 21 judges noted that Britain had an obligation to prevent pollution of the marine environment that might result from operation of the plant. The tribunal also ordered the UK to cooperate with Ireland in preparing an assessment of possible consequences for the Irish Sea arising out of the commissioning of the MOX plant and devising measures to prevent such pollution. Nuala Aherne, an Irish Green MEP has also made a complaint to the European Commission that the 'sunk costs' of the plant amount to an 'illegal subsidy'. The EC has said it will take this complain seriously
Instead, initial approval would be given by Ministers, with Parliament making the key decision. Public inquiries would not question the need for the development and would deal only with local details.
The proposal also:
Friends of the Earth lawyers are closely studying the proposals to check that they comply with human rights and environmental protection legislation.
The Government proposals can be found at www.planning.dtlr.gov.uk/consult/majinfra/index.htm. The consultation period runs until 18 March 2002.
Copies of the Green Paper "Planning: delivering a fundamental change" can be obtained free from DTLR 0870 1226 236. Copies are also at envolve.
Terry