Michael Meacher MP and former UK Secretary of State for the Environment is now visiting Iceland at the invitation of the Information Campaign on GMOs. He will give a lecture in the Nordic House in Reykjavík on Monday the 3rd of April on the future of GM food and pharmaceutical crops. Mr Meacher will discuss the current status and future prospects in this area, in particular the European and North-American scene where governments have committed themselves to the precautionary principle. Read the announcement in Icelandic and an English version of a press release.

The Information Campaign is greatly honoured to host Mr Meacher and is looking forward to hearing his views on GMOs. His role in developing the GM debate in the UK and elsewhere is particularly significant, since during his time as Environment Secretary he launched wide ranging consultation with the British public on GM food and crops, and ordered the first major crop trials ever conducted to test for the comparative environmental impacts of GM and conventional crops.

Michael Meacher is today among the most experienced MPs in the British Parliament. He has served continuously as an MP for almost 36 years, he was a minister in the Wilson and Callaghan governments 1974-1979, and was a front-bench spokesman of the Labour shadow cabinet in 1983-1997, when he became Secretary of State for the Environment in the first Blair governments (1997-2003) with responsibility for environment, transport, food and regional affairs.

Read the press release.