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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 August 18, 2010 at 7:50am
Monsanto is evil. In Soda City, Idaho they have a phosphate mining plant that is poisoning the water. When pressed to change their methods and clean up the poisonous mess that they had created they pointed to their contract with the town that states that Monsanto will return the environment to its original state when they are through with their mining operations so - since they are still mining - they don't have to do it yet.
Comment by Rady Ananda on August 18, 2010 at 9:36am
That has got to be illegal on some level - that term in the contract I mean.

corporations are destroying the planet. we gotta stop them
Comment by pan on August 18, 2010 at 2:23pm
Correction - the town's name is Soda Springs
Comment by waldopaper on August 19, 2010 at 10:00am
"Besides producing phosphorus, the Soda Springs plant is an active corporate citizen in southeast Idaho. Our Soda Springs operations are the largest of Caribou County’s phosphate mining and manufacturing businesses. We employ 770 people, 375 of whom work directly for P4 Production LLC, Monsanto’s wholly owned subsidiary, and 395 of whom work for contractors doing mining, plant maintenance, security and other jobs directly associated with the business. Of these employees, 94% live in four southeast Idaho counties, broken out as follows:"
http://www.quikproherbicide.com/who_we_are/locations/unitedstates/i...

Got that? "Jobz." (no mention of ground water either)
Another example of "capital" trumping "community." now, class... what trumps "capital?" That's right! "Coercion!" And what trumps "coercion? Right again! "Community!"

Now... the locals gotta come up with a ground water ordinance (if they don't have one that isn't being enforced already)... and for non-compliance- the local kapos seize the mine. Would work... except the local politicos and kapos probably don't work for the local people. Monanto bought 'em.
Comment by waldopaper on August 24, 2010 at 7:54am
"..will return the environment to its original state when they are through with their mining operations..."

And they've already said they can't do it.
Comment by pan on August 24, 2010 at 8:17am
watched the gubernatorial debate last night - Republican Governor "Butch" Otter (his name seems like a character from some hard-core gay/bestiality porn) was very clearly pro-business to the point that commuters have seen their taxes/fees double while the trucking industry only saw a 5% increase.
Comment by Rady Ananda on August 24, 2010 at 3:11pm
hey, btw, this article was just translated into German:
http://www.propagandafront.de/143700/zerstorung-von-gmo-feldern-nim...
Comment by pan on September 5, 2010 at 8:08am
Meanwhile, in the U.S., District Judge Jeffrey White, a federal judge in California, has banned the planting of genetically modified Roundup Ready sugar beets created by Monsanto. The beets are engineered to withstand Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer.

White said he was “troubled by maintaining the status quo that consists of 95 percent of sugar beets being genetically engineered while [the USDA] conducts the environmental review that should have occurred before the sugar beets were deregulated.”

The ban does not affect crops already planted and harvested for sugar.

The St. Louis Business Journal reports:

“Environmental groups ... filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in January 2008 to challenge the deregulation of Roundup Ready sugar beets by the USDA ... Opponents say the beets promote superweeds, weeds that cannot easily be killed because they have developed a tolerance to weed killer. They also raise concerns about the contamination of conventional and organic crops.”


link to article
Comment by Rady Ananda on September 5, 2010 at 8:38am
Pan, have you seen the docufilm, A Silent Forest: Growing threat of GE trees? (2005, ~45 mins) http://current.com/entertainment/movies/89996837_a-silent-forest-th...

I've been trying to finish this piece on GE trees, but there is so much info out there, my head swims. I'm gonna add Mercola's piece to my notes, tho. this aspect of biotechnology frightens me more than gm crops because GE forests will wipe out ecosystems much more biodiverse than, say, prairielands.
Comment by pan on October 3, 2010 at 8:07am
Bloomberg: Genetically Modified Corn Polluting Streams, Rivers and Lakes With Insecticides

link

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