The sun shone and the afternoon buzzed with the sound of bees…. wait a minute…that was the sound of human bees! Well humans dressed as bees!
It was Friends of the Earths annual summer picnic and get
together to celebrate our year of work and what better way to celebrate than to
celebrate the life of bees and how we need to protect them. So, we decided to
have a picnic in Humberstone Park – dressing-up as bees was optional.
We have spent the last year working again on our pesticide
project – trying to get Leicester City Council to stop spraying parks and green
spaces with glyphosate.
The Global Glyphosate Study that concluded this year was a
multi-national study on the effects of glyphosate and the results were even
worse than feared: there is no safe level of exposure to glyphosate when it
comes to human health, with the risk of multiple types of cancer and DNA
damage. Also, the GM crops that have
been developed to resist glyphosate have also been shown to have an impact on
human health. Our latest approach is to
highlight the impact on pet health while we wait for the public consultation on
the renewing of the glyphosate licence in December 2026.
The family friendly picnic was well supported. Families
brought food to share, children and adults dressed in bee costumes and made
paper flowers to take home with them. We also had a huge Rainforest picture for
people to colour in to think about the current national campaign, “Planet over
Profit”, where we are asking the government to bring in a law to make companies
avoid harm to people and planet in their supply chains.
It was a lovely day – a celebration of everyone’s hard work, then everyone can have a well-earned rest ready for the next round of work persuading Leicester City Council to stop spraying the same as Lewes, Cowes, Trafford, Cambridge and many others and keep its environmental status as an environmental city that cares about nature and wants to help save our pollinators.
Time to listen Leicester City Council?
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