And this just in from Dave “Blather” Walsh, without whom this blog wouldn’t exist, currently high seas adventuring on board the Greenpeace ship Esperanza…
So, I told many of you last week that I was ‘going to France’ Well, I am, bound for Lorient, via the island of Madeira. Right now, I’m in a gale, a hundred nautical miles west of northern Portugal/North West Spain.
The Esperanza left Falmouth last Friday night, with 34 crew on board, including guests from French farming organisations. One of them is the famous Jose Bove – you may remember him from a few years ago, when he was involved in a high-profile ‘dismantling’ of a new MacDonalds restaurant, in Larzac, in the South of France. He’s also famous for his impressive walrus moustache, his old-skool pipe, and his nickname in the French media: Asterix
Late yesterday afternoon, about halfway between the coast of Portugal and Madeira, we tracked down our quarry – *The Golden Lion*, on its way from Argentina to France with a cargo of animal feeds, made from genetically engineered soya. In the EU, if food products contain GE products, they must be labelled as such. However, if farm animals are fed GE products, the resulting products – meat, milk, cheese, etc. *does not* require labelling. We decided to make some noise, in alliance with French farming organisations.
After days of flat-calm seas, the weather turned this morning, just as we were launching our ‘boarding party’ – which would have included Jose. Things didn’t go quite as planned.
Read about it here:
As of Wednesday morning, there’ll be a video up there too.
Average days on the Espy: up at 0630, in the boats by 8am, hanging off the side of ships in the North Atlantic by 0900. By 1000, dealing with colleagues all over Europe by satellite phone, by lunchtime I’ve had one nap, 1300 debriefing. Afternoon spent writing, organising video footage, photos, etc. 1700, another wee nap, by 1900, I’m in the galley, scrubbing pots. Now it’s 2015, and I’m writing this!
love, light and big bloody waves
– dave
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Here’s the Reuter’s coverage:
Greenpeace to track GMO soy cargo into French port
25 Jan 2005 15:52:03 GMT
Source: Reuters
PARIS, Jan 25 (Reuters) – Activists including Greenpeace and radical French
farmer Jose Bove said on Tuesday they had sailed to “intercept” a ship carrying
genetically-modified (GMO soybeans off Portugal and would accompany it to
France.
The campaigners, aboard the Greenpeace vessel Esperanza, said they would track
the Golden Lion, with its cargo of 32,000 tonnes of Argentine soybeans, to its
destination in the port of Lorient in Brittany, where it is due on Thursday
evening.
They called for anti-GMO activisits to assemble at the port on Friday to
“welcome” the vessel and protest against the large imports of GMO soya into the
European Union.
“The battle takes on a new dimension today,” Jose Bove said in statement
released from the Esperanza.
Greenpeace spokesman Arnaud Apoteker said new EU labelling rules for GMO seeds
did not guarantee total transparency as millions of tonnes of gene-altered
soybeans were imported and introduced into the food chain via their use in
animal feed.