2,000 Women Protest Against GM Food, Blockade Supermarket in Brazil

Amidst widescale protests against cor­po­rate con­trol of the food chain 2,000 Brazil­ian women block­ad­ed a super­mar­ket 800 miles south of Brasil­ia in a protest against genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered food

BRASILIA, Brazil: Women farm­ers through­out Brazil demon­strat­ed Thurs­day on Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day to protest world­wide eco­nom­ic poli­cies they say are unfair.

Some 700 women mem­bers of Brazil’s Land­less Rur­al Work­ers Move­ment occu­pied a McDonald’s restau­rant in Por­to Ale­gre, some 1,600 kms (1,000 miles) south of Brasil­ia.

They burned flags bear­ing the fast-food chain’s logo, crit­i­cized eco­nom­ic glob­al­iza­tion and called the Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment a slave to “world neolib­er­al­ism.” Thursday’s protest was inspired by the anti-glob­al­iza­tion efforts of French activist Jose Bove a sheep farmer who shot to fame for ran­sack­ing a McDonald’s restau­rant in France and was arrest­ed in Brazil last Jan­u­ary after he joined the work­ers move­ment in a mas­sive protest.

Also on Thurs­day, some 2,000 women blocked access to a super­mar­ket in Flo­ri­a­nop­o­lis, 1,300 kms (800 miles) south of Brasil­ia, claim­ing it sold genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered food.

And in Belo Hor­i­zonte, some 600 kms (380 miles) south­east of Brasil­ia, a group of women protest­ed in front of the local city coun­cil cham­bers demand­ing that the gov­ern­ment speed up agrar­i­an reform.