At noon on Friday July 27th Victoria University students from the environmental group Ecoaction will join members of the public at Parliament to call for a genetic engineering free New Zealand. The group are presenting to Jeanette Fitzsimons a map containing several thousand signatures demanding from the Government a GE free country. The signatures were gathered on a GE free tour by university students during their holiday period earlier this month.

The demonstration coincides with the reporting of the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification which will be released to the Government on this date. Ecoaction wish to highlight the fact that 98% of the submissions to the Commission were opposed to genetic engineering. This sentiment was consistently expressed by the public throughout their tour of the north island of New Zealand.

“It was overwhelming the support the public gave towards a GE free country.” said spokesperson Esme Gibbins. “There were considerable concerns already about the back door entry of genetic engineering in our food.”

Ecoaction support the demands on the Government from the GE free coalition to ban GE field trails, ban GE environmental releases and to stop GE within our food.

“Releasing GE into the environment is like having unconsenting sex with the entire biosphere. Sex should require consent. We do not consent!” says Ecoaction spokesperson Al Curran.

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