GM

I started out with Greenpeace nearly nine years ago as a press officer – and on arrival dived straight in at the deep end by heading off to Norwich to deal with media for the trial of 28 activists (including our then Director, Peter Melchett) who were charged with pulling up genetically modified (GM) crops from an experimental field in nearby Lyng. The atmosphere was charged, as our people were potentially facing jail, and the media interest was intense.

Chinese farmers are discovering that resurrecting the old tradition of keeping ducks in their rice fields allows them to cut down on the amount of pesticides and artificial fertilisers they need to use to grow their crops.

GM food producers are reeling after new investigations by the European Commission (EC) uncovered problems with three new types of genetically modified crops. The Commission raised concerns over a new type of GM potato and two types of GM maize, all of which had previously been given the green light by European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). For the first time, Europe's most senior lawmakers are publicly questioning the safety of GM crops.

Indian farmers campaigning against GM rice near Lucknow earlier this week © Greenpeace

A couple of GM stories have popped up recently over on our international site, one of which requires your help.

As if Monday mornings weren't generally bad enough, the Guardian's headline this morning warns of the "return of GM". Biotech companies and government ministers are preparing to shoehorn GM technologies into UK agriculture, using climate change as an excuse. Their reasoning is that they'll be able to win the public over this time round if they claim that GM crops are needed to keep us fed as the climate becomes less favourable to regular varieties.

How's this for a creative and exciting example of direct action - it's a blockade but with a difference. Earlier this morning in Romania, Greenpeace volunteers quarantined a whole island where GM soya crops are being grown, which is illegal under EU law. Vehicles leaving Braila island were hosed down by people wearing white biohazard suits to prevent genetic contamination spreading to the mainland. Even a donkey and cart were washed and made GM-free!

For me one of the coolest things about our new-look site is that we're carrying a lot more streaming video courtesy of the good folks at YouTube. But did you know that we now have our own YouTube Greenpeace UK Video Channel?

With Blair's recent departure, recollections of 1997 in the media have been dominated by two things: his ascension to power and the Spice Girls. On the other side of the world in China, that same year was important for a couple of other reasons. Most famously, the lease ran out on a small but strategic piece of land called Hong Kong and the British Empire lost one of its last outposts as ownership return to the People's Republic of China.

But on that same piece of land, about the same time Chris Patten was bidding a teary farewell, something else significant happened (at least, we like to think it was) - Greenpeace China opened its doors. The importance of this particular office to the organisation can't be underestimated and, as this video shows, many of our campaigns can't help but take China's astonishing economic and social development into account. And with China now possibly the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, the next ten years are going to be even busier over there.

A bizarre decision has been made by the EU to increase the maximum limit of GM material allowed in organic food, and effectively legitimise widespread GM contamination.

You might be alarmed to think that any GM ingredients end up in organic food, and you're right to be so. The previous maximum limit of 0.1 per cent was set simply because that was the lowest level that food could accurately be tested for GM contamination.

The new limit is 0.9 per cent, the same that applies to non-organic food, and while this might not sound like much, it does now mean that organic food can be polluted with much greater quantities of GM material before it has to be labelled with a warning. If organic food is tested and found to contain 0.8% GM contamination, it will be labeled as ‘GM free'.

This makes absolutely no sense. The success of organic foods has come about precisely because we trust them not to contain toxic chemicals and GM produce. As our campaigner Ben Ayliffe pointed out in the Independent, the shelves are groaning with organic food because it's what shoppers want, while GM food is conspicuous by its absence for the opposite reason.

For the EU to say it supports organic farming while increasing the level of contamination it can contain smacks of double standards. Do we see the lobbying fingerprints of the monolithic biotech companies all over this? I'll leave you to make up your own mind.