Organic Consumers Association and Action Aid are opposing research by Integrated Coffee Technologies Inc (ICTI) to develop a GM coffee designed to remove the need for coffee workers. Put pressure on ICTI to stop developing GM coffee: Send Instant Letter Here!

Information from Action Aid's coffee campaign (http://www.actionaid.org)
*download Action Aids GM Coffee report here*

You have been warned: GM ripening-controlled coffee has some serious side effects. Up to 60 million people could be permanently harmed by drinking it. So what makes GM coffee so destructive?

In nature, coffee beans don't all ripen at the same time, making any mechanised picking ineffcient. No wonder then that 70% of all coffee is grown by smallholder farmers in developing countries around the world. Changing the way coffee is grown would wipe out the livelihoods of these poor farmers  and push millions of people further into poverty. UK supermarkets and coffee retailers have the power to  stop the development of GM coffee.

They rely on your business and if they know you won't swallow GM coffee, then they won't stock it.  There will thenbe little point in growing it.

What is GM coffee? A US company called Integrated Coffee Technologies Inc. (ITCI) is developing a technology to control the ripening process of coffee trees. Coffee cherries normally ripen at different times and therefore have to be hand picked, giving absolutely essential jobs to poor people in the developing world.

ICTI's GM coffee has had its natural ripening process 'switched off' so that the coffee cherries will only ripen once it is 'switched on' again when sprayed with the chemical ethylene. It is an example of genetic technology being used to chemically control a plant's normal behaviour such as sprouting, flowering and ripening.

The GM coffee crisis. Coffee is grown in 80 countries, and 70% of the world's coffee is produced by smallholder farmers. It is often picked by poor people, some of them coffee farmers themselves trying to make ends meet.Traditional coffee farming doesn't just produce high quality coffee, it provides millions of families with the means to stay alive. Already living in poverty, few have a choice about what they do to earn a living. Coffee is all they have to hang on to, to keep them from going under.

But there is a dangerous new GM (genetically modified) coffee in development, designed to increase the profits of huge industrial plantations. It will do this at the expense of the smallholder coffee farmers who will be driven out of business and further into poverty. It will destroy people's lives and probably won't benefit you. Only big companies will be better off.