Activists prepare to take on Sainsbury's
Greenpeace volunteers have been out at Sainsbury's stores across the country every weekend to tell the supermarket giant we don't want GM in our milk.
Thanks to Ermintrude of Reading for her diary extract
07:30 The herd gathered early for briefings, breakfast and mooing practice. We mingled happily with white-capped milkmen and milk ladies who were to be commooonicators for the day - those tasked with talking to people and getting the Greenpeace petition signed. Our extra large sisters (aka "the double cows") learned how to work with their herdsman and tried out a few dance steps.
10:15 Time to herd off to the large Sainsbury's Savacentre store in west Reading. My fellow single cows and I were lucky enough to be transported by our team leader, Jerry, while the others spent longer than expected moooching around in a dark alley, waiting for the reluctant taxis to arrive.
11:15 The call came to mooove into position, and our little herd, proudly wearing our Greenpeace rosettes, moseyed along to the main entrance of the store, where the commooonicators, double cows and spokespeople had already gathered. A giant inflatable milk bottle had been erected opposite the entrance, advertising the fact that Sainsbury's milk came from cows fed on GM crops (no bull!). Video cameras and microphones were much in evidence, so we steered ourselves into camera shot behind people who were being interviewed for Meridian TV, and adopted our best cow poses. We herd that 3 people were successfully "locked on" in the chilly dairy isle inside the store, and felt glad that we could moove around freely out in the sunshine.
12:15 Spokesperson Trish led us (I hesitate to say "sheep-like") into the store for a short cow tour around the veg section, accompanied by much moooing and an annoyingly realistic Greenpeace customer announcement, magically emanating from a carrier bag in her shopping trolley.
12:30 Back outside the store, we carried on with our job for the day, drawing attention to the Greenpeace action, supporting the commooonicators, waving at children, scratching our backs against posts etc. After a while we decided to have a cow picnic, then danced to our favourite tune "Rawhide" and played a game or two of heifer tennis, to the amusement of many of Sainsbury's customers. We noticed that the police had arrived at the main entrance, and negotiations were taking place.
13:15 Time to graze, so a few at a time, we moooved "off action" and headed for the sandwich van for a break, a trip to the loo, and in my case, an emergency operation on one of my cow ears which had started to fall off; perhaps the heavy dangly earrings had been a prop too far...
14:00 The lockers-on had released themselves after an impressive two and a half hours in position in the dairy isle and were warming up in the sunshine. The police had agreed the cows and commooonicators could stay outside the store as long as we didn't cause an obstruction, so the action continued for another hour.
15:00 Our straw poll was presented to the store manager, who had been irate yet distant throughout the action, but who was visibly surprised that 657 of his customers had asked Sainsbury's not to sell milk from GM-fed cattle.
16:00 A short debrief back in the town centre to celebrate another successful day out "in the field", then home to watch the Meridian news.
Lindsey "Ermintrude" Brown, Reading Group
If you want to get involved with Greenpeace campaigns visit our Get Active website for more information.
For more more information on the Scairy in the Dairy camapign read on.
