… has begun. We have just mailed all logistics information to 287 participants registered so far and the first half of the conference secretariat is packing to go to Brussels. So please bear with us for any delay in processing your last minute requests and inquieries.
REGISTRATION WILL BE SHUT DOWN ON TUESDAY – ONLY 24 HOURS LEFT TO JOIN US
As usual there are last minute changes in the programme. Continue reading “The final countdown” »
More than 260 regions, over 4500 municipalities and other local entities and tens of thousands of farmers and food producers in Europe have declared themselves “GMO-free” expressing their commitment not to allow the use of genetically modified organisms in the agriculture and food in their territories. Since 2005, the movement of GMO-Free Regions in Europe has held an annual meeting.
In preparation for the 6th Conference of the GMO-free Europe/Regions in Brussels and Gent on September 16th-18th, we are looking for multi-lingual European volunteers to help us with general organization, translations and interpretations. You will be helping the organizers at the conference venues Vormingscentrum Guislain in Gent and the European Parliament in Brussels
We hope you will agree that the programme for our meeting in Ghent on Friday and Saturday provides a varied and exciting choice of workshops and presentations from some of the best-informed speakers and activists in these fields. However, we believe that everyone who attends this event is an expert in their own field and has something special to share. So we want to create a space where YOU can also contribute to the programme. If you have an important issue or exciting idea that you would like to share with other participants, we invite you to help create an alternative agenda which will help us to ensure that this conference addresses all the questions that matter to the GMO-free movement in 2010! Continue reading “Connections Café – adding a special flavor to GMO-free Europe 2010!” »
Something from the lighter side of life (if that really is): The International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside hosted 30 aspirants for the ‘Miss Supra National’ beauty competition which is taking place in Poland. Continue reading “GMO Free Beauties” »
We proudly to annouce that all workshops to be held on September 17th and 18th are now online. Please have a look, thik about your contirbutions and which workshops to attend. Also, if you want to participate in a workshop and cannot do so in English, please let us know immediately, so we can allocate the limited translation facilities. We also welcome your comments and input to the topics.
It is Saturday afternoon and I have just finished a new page featuring all the sponsors of this years conference. They are wonderful and they deserve a big, big thank you! Securing the funding of the GMO Free Regions conference is always a nightmare: No public money, plenty of severely underfunded initiatives and participants, little commercial interest in an event far from home and the media, no sexy project for foundations. Yesterday, an executive of a triple digit million turnover organic company took his and my time to let me know why they would not give a dime: “We have made it a principle for our sponsoring activities that they can be directly communicated to our customers”. Meanwhile, a neighboring farmer sends an email: “No time. Harvest! 500 € coming your way”. The two reactions made me think about a little something that can make a big difference. Continue reading “Cheers to our sponsors, our values and that little something …” »
Ghent is Europe’s biotech-valley Nr.1 in Europe and Nr.3 world wide – All major GMO ompanies have research facilities there, as have the University and plenty of small companies.We thought it would be nice to meet some of these folks and get to know each other. Be prepared for an organic lunch on Friday with the biotech community for a rather informal exchange of views and arguments.
The preliminary list of workshops to be held during “Gmo Free Europe 2010″ is now online. Please check the issues and send us your contributions now.
The revised, legally non binding coexistence recommendations of the European Commission have now been published in all languages of the EU in its Official Journal (Nr.200, of 22. July 2010).
The conference “Patents on Seeds – The turning point?” on July 19th in Munich will discuss current trends and highlight the negative impacts of the current patent system. Continue reading “Patents on Seeds: Conference & Demonstration” »
