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[GMO grapevines destroyed (AFP)]

By Rady Ananda

Food Freedom


Early Sunday morning, French police stood helpless as sixty people, locked inside an open-air field of genetically modified grapevines, uprooted all the plants. In Spain last month, dozens of people destroyed two GMO fields. On the millennial cusp, Indian farmers burned Bt cotton in their Cremate Monsanto campaign. Ignored by multinational corporations and corrupt public policy makers, citizens act to protect the food supply and the planet.

The French vineyard is the same field attacked last year when the plants were only cut. But the security features installed after that incident kept authorities at bay while the group accomplished its mission yesterday.

Speaking for the group, Olivier Florent told Le Figero that they condemned the use of public funds for open-field testing of GMOs “that we do not want.”

Pitching tents in the rain near France’s National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA) site in Colmar the night before, the group waited until 5 AM before converging on the site and locking the gates behind them. They uprooted all 70 plants, then submitted to arrest.

This is the second attack on GMO crops to make international news this year. In July dozens of people destroyed two experimental corn crops in Spain. In an anonymous press release, they wrote, “This kind of direct action is the best way to respond to the fait accompli policy through which the Generalitat, the State and the biotech multinationals have been unilaterally imposing genetically modified organisms.”

In the late 1990s, Indian farmers burnt Bt cotton fields in their Cremate Monsanto campaign. Monsanto did not disclose to farmers that the GM seeds were experimental. “Despite the heavy use of chemical fertiliser, traces of which still can be observed in the field, the Bt plants grew miserably, less than half the size of the traditional cotton plants in the adjacent fields.”


After the Haiti earthquake this year, Monsanto offered 475 tons of hybrid corn and terminator vegetable seeds in partnership with USAID. In June, 10,000 Haitian farmers marched in protest of the “poison gift” which produces no viable seeds for future plantings and requires heavy chemical inputs. Haitian farm leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste observed that the biotech plan makes farmers dependent on multinational corporations.

In the US, GMOs were secretly foisted on the public in the mid-1990s, and only now is the US Supreme Court addressing the scourge. In June, the high court upheld partial deregulation of GM alfalfa, which permits limited planting while the USDA prepares an Environmental Impact Statement. Natural and organic alfalfa supply is threatened by the very real potential of GM contamination. This would destroy the organic meat and dairy industry.

Last Friday, a federal court took a tougher position on GM sugar beets. Judge Jeffrey S. White revoked USDA approval of the GM beet, while allowing for its planting this year only.

Also this month, a British farmer exposed that milk and meat from cloned animals had secretly entered the food supply.

Public opposition to GM crops has grown in recent years as more evidence surfaces that DNA-altered crops:


Meanwhile, President Obama has stacked his Administration with biotech insiders going so far as to appoint Islam Siddiqui as Agriculture Trade Negotiator. Siddiqui is a former pesticide lobbyist and vice president of CropLife America, a biotech and pesticide trade group that lobbies to weaken environmental laws.

The US is pushing hard at the world to accept GM foods. Recently, the American Farm Bureau Federation called for
stronger sanctions against the European Union for its GM crop ban.

But as governments and trade agreements circumvent the will of the people, some take matters into their own hands. The rise in GMO crop destruction is a clear indication that the world’s people reject chemical and genetic pollution of the food supply and the environment.


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Views: 65

Comment by pan on October 16, 2010 at 8:09am
Apparently their army of lawyers and private investigators hauling farmers into court for breach of copyright on their seed whet their appetite:

A report by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation (Blackwater's Black Ops, 9/15/2010) revealed that the largest mercenary army in the world, Blackwater (now called Xe Services) clandestine intelligence services was sold to the multinational Monsanto.

link to article
Comment by pan on October 18, 2010 at 7:21am
Turns out that Monsanto didn't buy Xe, they merely hired them.
Comment by Rady Ananda on October 18, 2010 at 10:05am
Yeah! Isn't that something? I wrote about that -- extending from the above article after doing more research into the history of gm crop sabotage thru-out the world.

Monsanto, Blackwater and GM crop saboteurs
Posted on September 16, 2010 by Rady| 40 Comments

By Rady Ananda
Food Freedom

"Agribusiness giant Monsanto, which genetically modifies plants to exude or tolerate pesticide or to produce nonviable seed, hired the services of the mercenary firm Blackwater to spy on activists, Jeremy Scahill reports. A death-tech firm weds a hit squad."


I assert that "Monsanto didn’t hire assassins to sway public opinion" and then list 30 instances of crop sabotage and reference 100 more.

I mention an attack in August by 100 thugs on a group of farmers and villagers who had gathered to hear scientific evidence on the harm caused by the herbicide glyphosate - the main ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup.

You may have heard, too, that Monsanto's stock dropped from a peak of $145 a share in 2008 to under $48 a share early this month. That's pretty laughable, especially since Forbes crowned Monsanto "Company of the Year" last December.

Everyone's laughing at Forbes this month...
Comment by pan on November 10, 2010 at 8:49am
Hard not to conclude that this angry mob that prevented Dr. Carrasco from speaking out about the birth defects connected to Roundup was directly hired by Monsanto.....
Comment by Rady Ananda on November 10, 2010 at 9:50am
yeah, especially since local authorities were part of the 100-strong group of attackers
Comment by pan on January 22, 2012 at 8:37am
Comment by Rady Ananda on January 22, 2012 at 10:14am

thx, Pan ~ yeah, I saw those pieces. the infertility piece is old news but the slave info is new. I just posted it at food freedom yesterday. Good catch!

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