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Jamie Oliver has shared his fears that Brexit could lead to falling standards in Britain’s farm sector. He was speaking to Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington in Davos, Switzerland where rich and influential leaders are gathered for the World Economic Forum.

Jamie OliverThe celebrity chef said the EU wasn’t perfect, but praised its food standards as the “safest on the planet.” He highlighted Europe’s falling chemical burden and hostility to GM crops in the talk. The main fear he aired was of a trade deal with the US; President-elect Donald Trump has indicated that he is amenable to establishing a quick UK-US trade deal, but Oliver said this would leave the UK open to imports produced to lower standards, including hormone treated meat.

Vote will take place 27 January

The European Commission has confirmed that it is planning a vote on Friday 27 January where it will push for the first GMO cultivation authorisations since 1998.

The crops in question include two new strains of GM maize — Syngenta’s Bt11 and DuPont Pioneer’s 1507 — as well as the re-approval for Monsanto’s MON810, which is already grown in Spain and Portugal.

There’s more information here:

http://www.gmwatch.org/news/latest-news/17233

Please share this information with all your contacts and get in touch with officials to ask them to oppose cultivation.

Get active now and tell your ministers that GM crops are unwanted

After several delays, the EU is heading to the decision, if new GM crops would authorisised in the EU in 18 years.

Here (http://greens-efa-service.eu/nogmo/) you can write or tweet to your minister and tell them why our farming and nature needs a GMOfree future.

More and more governments are announcing to reject these toxic crops as Poland, Austria, Greece, Luxembourg, Austria and Hungary.

Burkina Faso is one of the world’s top cotton producers, but its sales have taken a hit on the world markets. Some blame GM cotton, which the government now wants to phase out by 2018.

Agri businesses: Take your hands off our food! Together for healthy food, more rural and ecological farming and fair trade

Farming and regional food are at risk. Agri business and the Federal Government of Germany are pushing ahead with the industrialisation of agriculture and food. As a consequence the number of farms is collapsing globally, artisan food products are disappearing, as hundreds of millions of people are suffering from hunger or malnutrition. Meanwhile, pollution, biodiversity loss and the climate crisis becomes more and more crucial.

We want farms instead of agri business!

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We are farmers, food producers, beekeepers, bakers, gardeners, animal, environmental and nature activists, development workers, critical consumers and committed young people.

We are calling on you to join us as we fight for a more rural and ecological agriculture on the 7th international “We are fed up!” demonstration.

We need healthy food for everyone! We will make the transformation in food and farming a core political issue in this year. Policies and practices need to change so people and not corporations determine our food. We are fed up!

Saturday 21 January, 2017, in Berlin.

The EU is considering the exclusion of gene-edited plants and animals from GM regulations, write Janet Cotter & Ricarda Steinbrecher. However gene-edited organisms clearly fall within the definition of GMOs in both European and international law. They also present real risks to the environment and human health - and must be regulated like any other GMOs.

There has been a lot in the news recently about the ethics of gene editing in humans.

But, as yet largely unnoticed is that the European Commission is considering whether the gene-editing of plants and animals, for example in agriculture, be exempted from regulation or even falls outside the scope of EU law governing genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

In other words, whether the products of gene-editing should be labelled and regulated as GMOs, or allowed to enter the food chain untested and unlabelled.

If you believe the proponents' claims, gene-editing is nothing more than the 'tweaking' of DNA in plants and animals - nothing to be concerned about.

But the reality is that gene editing is simply GM 2.0, with many of the same concerns and problems as the GM crops that Europeans have already rejected.

This lobby paper Who will feed Africans: Small-scale farmers not corporations! produced by the partnership between FoEA and ACB, makes the compelling case for African agriculture to transition towards agroecology and food sovereignty, recognising and strengthening the role of small scale farmers, rather than benefitting few large scale corporations with detrimental ecological, socio-economic, and nutritional outcomes. It argues strongly for a shift in the approach to agricultural development, from a chemical approach to a biological approach; from a Green Revolution, to an Agroecological Revolution; putting smallholder producers at the centre.

The paper points to extensive evidence that shows that agroecological farming systems can provide the foundation to feed a growing and urbanised African population, protect livelihoods and preserve and regenerate ecological resources to sustain future generations.

Non-GMO and organic foods, apart from natural food stores, Non-GMO products now came in mainstream and sold in major supermarkets nationwide. It has been noticed, consumer is demanding more organic & Non GMO products. Non-GMO yogurt is where the presence of toxic persistent pesticides, artificial hormones and antibiotics, for production of the milk is zero. The use of Non-GMO reached nearly 11% on food and beverages since 2013, the demand has been increased of Non-GMO products. In the US, a survey was conducted for GMO and Non-GMO food products, Maximum Americans agreed on the fact that GMO food product are not safe to eat and also not good for health.

Agriculture Minister supports the idea.

There are growing demands in Croatia that food which has absolutely no genetically modified organisms should be officially labelled as “GMO free” since, at the moment, by purchasing food in Croatia and in other parts of the EU consumers cannot be absolutely sure that they are not buying small doses of GMOs as well, reports Večernji List on January 11, 2017.

Currently, the fact that there is no GMO label on the food implies that there are no GMOs in it at all, which is not necessarily true. Although there is no reason to think that the EU could soon change its legislative framework related to the presence or absence of GMOs in food, it is not unrealistic to hope that individual EU member states, including Croatia, could adopt regulations labelling as GMO-free those products which contain absolutely no GMOs.

Brussels has agreed to the launch of a European Citizens’ Initiative on banning glyphosate in the EU. EurActiv France reports.

The controversy over the authorisation of the chemical glyphosate could find its way back to the European Commission’s table through a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) supported by environmental NGOs, including Greenpeace.

The European executive yesterday (10 January) announced the reception of an ECI inviting the Commission to “propose to member states a ban on glyphosate, to reform the pesticide approval procedure, and to set EU-wide mandatory reduction targets for pesticide use”.

Simply titled ‘Ban Glyphosate’, the initiative will be officially registered on 25 January. From this date, EU citizens will have 12 months in which to add their signature to the document.

One million signatures