Britain Says `No' to GM Java.

UK -- Integrated Coffee Technologies, Inc. (ICTI), a US-based company, is hard at work on a scheme to genetically re-jigger coffee beans so that they all ripen at the same time when sprayed with a chemical "activator." This would mean that coffee could be mass-harvested by machine, instead of slowly gathered by hand. Mechanized coffee-plucking would enrich large corporate-owned plantations. It would also destroy the Eves of millions of small farmers who currently provide 70 percent of the world's coffee. The trade watchdog group ActionAid [Freepost BS4868, Chard, Somerset, TA20 1BR, www.actionaid.org] warns that "up to seven million poor farmers won't be able to afford the chemical or compete with the big companies." ActionAid, fearing that some 60 million people could be driven from their farms and plunged into poverty, has called on British markets to refuse to stock GM java. [You can send a letter to ICTI through www.purefood.org]