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Marchers protest GMO foods
About 20 people take to the streets to voice concerns

Sarah Ladik
Northern News Services
Published Tuesday, October 15, 2013

HAY RIVER
Nearly two-dozen people marched in downtown Hay River on Oct. 12 to protest what they see as the growing problem of genetically-modified food and dwindling biodiversity of crops.

NNSL photo/graphic

Jackie Milne, the co-organizer of Saturday's March Against Monsanto, says the demonstration was about raising awareness and promoting non-GMO options in Hay River as much as it was about protesting the company itself. - Sarah Ladik/NNSL photo

“That’s just trying to shove crap down your throat and tell you it tastes good,” said Jackie Milne, the march's co-organizer and a local food proponent, of multinational agri-business Monsanto, the target of the protesters' ire. “It’s all propaganda. They’re making it harder and harder for us to feed ourselves.”

Hay River's March Against Monsanto was a part of demonstrations in 52 countries on Oct. 12 against the giant corporation based in the United States.

Monsanto owns patents on a multitude of genetically-modified organisms (GMO), including varieties of corn, soybean and wheat. While GMO crops can withstand harsher climates and produce higher yields, they also can cause problems for farmers who have to buy seed from Monsanto every year to keep producing food, as well as the stock of domesticated food-crops in general as the diversity of organisms shrinks around the globe.

“Seeds have been cultivated by humans for tens of thousands of years,” said Milne. “If there’s one thing that should belong to the collective, domesticated seeds are it.”

As for Hay River, it remains free of GMO crops, primarily because the climate does not support large-scale production of corn, canola or soybean. But Milne and her fellow organizers said there is a need to raise awareness anyway, and to convince people to protest with their pocketbooks when they go to the grocery store. They advocate buying non-GMO and organic foods when at all possible, but that’s sometimes complicated by the fact there is currently no requirement in Canada for companies to label food as containing GMOs.

“I would go beyond the labelling issues and just ban it,” said Milne.

For others on the march, it is a question of health, as well as the right to know what goes into food. Bonnie Kimble and Eileen Gour both commented on the growing resistance to GMO food in the global health community.

“I was reading about how in the United Kingdom doctors are prescribing non-GMO foods to treat things,” said Gour. “The changes in people’s health have been well-documented.”

Kimble said the ongoing interest in alternative and traditional medicines also makes the movement against what she termed “frankenfood” a timely one.

“This is the time to be changing things,” she said. “There are a lot of people interested in alternative treatments now and changing how we feed ourselves is a part of that.”

Rallies were held in other places across Canada, many of them much larger than the nearly two dozen who marched on Woodland Drive, but Milne said it was important for her to see Hay River as part of a greater whole, all fighting for the same cause.

“We want to make people aware and help them start feeding themselves,” she said. “We need to be working together because the problem is everywhere and only if we work collectively can we fix it. The purity of life is something worth changing for.”

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