"Denmark will introduce a national ban on the BASF GE potato Amflora". This was what the Danish minister of environment, Karen Ellemann, told media and public yesterday when they gathered at a Greenpeace rally to eat GE-free organic potato soup outside the ministry of environment in Copenhagen. The minister added: “a national ban is fully supported by danish parliament” .
Greenpeace, Avaaz and Friends of The Earth where serving patato soup in front of the Danish Ministry of Environment. One of the visitors was Environmental Minister Karen Ellemann, who announced during the event that she wants a national ban on the GE patato Amflora.
Besides handing out soup Greenpeace, Avaaz and Friends of the Earth asked people to sign a petition to stop approvals of GE in EU.
Greenpeace strongly welcomed the announcement from the minister. "A national ban is great news. At the national level we need the ban to keep the potato from being grown in Denmark. At EU level a national ban is a strong signal telling the EU Commission to stop approving unsafe GE foods. We need to get the EU to rethinks its handling of GE approvals", said Dan Belusa, Greenpeace GE campaigner in Copenhagen.
At the Copenhagen GE-free-potato-soup rally activists from Greenpeace and FoE gathered signatures for the joint Greenpeace, Avaaz and FoE petition to get EU to obey the existing GE-legislation.
The EU approval to grow the BASF GE potato in March raised wide criticism. Denmark voted against approving the potato. Since the new EU-commision approved the GE potato regardless, Danish government will now work to put in place a national ban on Amflora.
In August 2007 Greenpeace reported Connie Hedegaard, who was Environment Minister in Denmark at that time, to the police for breaking the law from 2002 that prohibits GE carrying antibiotic resistance genes.
Picture credit: © Greenpeace / Peter Sørensen