What we do

Chemical intensive agriculture means toxic farming, toxic food.

Our Food and Agriculture campaign has two main goals:

1. To stop the commercialisation of genetically-engineered (GE) rice in China.

2.  To get China’s agricultural sector to move away from chemical intensive practices and to encourage the widespread application of eco-farming (organic).

How are we doing this?

• We work with scientists to publish studies and policy recommendations on the dangers of chemical intensive agriculture and GE food.

• We raise consumer awareness on the health risks of chemical intensive agriculture and GE food.

• We expose the illegal commercial planting of GE crops and the illegal sale of GE food.

• We test food for toxic pesticide residues.

• We lobby food and drink manufacturers such as Pepsi and Kraft to promise not to use GE ingredients in their products in China.


Toxic farming, toxic food

This year our key campaign, Toxic Farming, Toxic Food, is aimed at making food in Chinese supermarkets safe for us to eat.

We will highlight the dangers of pesticides and GE food to the Chinese public.

We will also ask consumers to pressure supermarkets to stop selling GE food and to ensure their fruit and vegetable suppliers eliminate pesticides from their farms.

The true cost of agrochemicals

As well as hurting us, agrochemicals and GE crops pose a serious threat to the environment.

Every year lakes in China, such Tai Lake in Jiangsu province, are smothered in a toxic algal bloom directly caused by fertiliser use.

We collect water samples from lakes to assess how bad the problem is.

These blooms are toxic to the environment as well as creating a fetid stench.

They kill fish and can harm people.

Say no to GE rice

Rice is China’s staple crop.

We are looking into the threats GE rice poses to China's environment, people, and food security.

In particular we are looking into the patents held on GE rice strains being tested in China.

We have found that all of them have some foreign ownership meaning if China was to commercialise any of them it would threaten the country’s food sovereignty.

Our ultimate aim is to lobby the government to abandon plans to commercialise the growing of GE rice.