Hunger strike in France to protest gene-altered crops

PARIS: The mil­i­tant French sheep farmer Jose Bove and as many as 15 of his sup­port­ers were expect­ed to begin a hunger strike Thurs­day aimed at rais­ing pres­sure on the French gov­ern­ment to impose a long-term ban on grow­ing genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops.

PARIS: The mil­i­tant French sheep farmer Jose Bove and as many as 15 of his sup­port­ers were expect­ed to begin a hunger strike Thurs­day aimed at rais­ing pres­sure on the French gov­ern­ment to impose a long-term ban on grow­ing genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops.

In a news­pa­per inter­view pub­lished Wednes­day, the anti-glob­al­iza­tion activist vowed not to eat again until a ban was in place.

Bove cap­tured world­wide atten­tion for help­ing to orga­nize the ran­sack­ing of a McDon­ald’s restau­rant nine years ago to protest the influ­ence of multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions. Since then he has served time in a French prison for dam­ag­ing gene-altered crops.

While his cam­paigns have struck a sym­pa­thet­ic chord in many parts of France and Europe where gene-altered foods are wide­ly mis­trust­ed — and where Bove is some­thing of a folk hero — the lat­est protest against altered crops comes as divi­sions over the poten­tial ben­e­fits of the tech­nol­o­gy appear to be deep­en­ing across the region.

Some Euro­pean Union offi­cials remain wary of using prod­ucts that could endan­ger insects and fish and dis­turb ecosys­tems, but oth­ers have redou­bled calls to ease restric­tions on altered seeds as a way of keep­ing farm­ing glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive at a time of sky­rock­et­ing food prices.

The Euro­pean agri­cul­ture com­mis­sion­er, Mar­i­ann Fis­ch­er Boel, warned farm min­is­ters in Novem­ber that Europe’s resis­tance to import­ing genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied prod­ucts like live­stock feed was con­tribut­ing to the ris­ing cost of rais­ing pigs and chick­ens and could pose a threat to the meat indus­try.

In Octo­ber, the French pres­i­dent, Nico­las Sarkozy, dis­ap­point­ed sup­port­ers of a long-term ban by announc­ing a tem­po­rary freeze on genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied seeds pend­ing the out­come of a review of the tech­nol­o­gy that is expect­ed ear­ly this year.

Bove has said he is under­tak­ing his hunger strike to push the French gov­ern­ment into mak­ing a much longer-term com­mit­ment to end seed cul­ti­va­tion.

Genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied corn is already import­ed into sev­er­al EU coun­tries, includ­ing France and Ger­many, where it is used to feed ani­mals like cows and chick­ens. But only one genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crop is cur­rent­ly grown in Europe, a form of corn pro­duced by Mon­san­to and nine oth­er com­pa­nies called Mon 810 that is the main tar­get of Bové’s protest.

Aus­tria, Hun­gary and Poland are among coun­tries that already have banned the Mon­san­to corn.

A long-term ban ‘is the only thing that will put an end to this hunger strike,’ Bove told the French dai­ly Sud Ouest in an inter­view pub­lished Wednes­day. ‘Promis­es won’t be sat­is­fac­to­ry.’

Bove told Sud Ouest that he would con­duct the hunger strike in a well-known pub­lic loca­tion in Paris where he would not cause any secu­ri­ty prob­lems. He declined to reveal the where­abouts of the loca­tion before Thurs­day.

Bove began reduc­ing his intake of alco­hol, meat, eggs and cheese at the end of Decem­ber to start accus­tom­ing his body to the fast, dur­ing which he said he expect­ed to lose half-a-kilo­gram, or about one pound, of weight each day, he told anoth­er French news­pa­per, Midi Libre.

‘This hunger-strike is a well-con­sid­ered com­mit­ment, not a sui­ci­dal act,’ Bove told Midi Libre.

By James Kan­ter Inter­na­tion­al Her­ald Tri­bune, Jan­u­ary 2 2008 http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/02/europe/gmo.php