GM quarantine in Romania

5 Sep­tem­ber 2007

How’s this for a cre­ative and excit­ing exam­ple of direct action — it’s a block­ade but with a dif­fer­ence.

Ear­li­er this morn­ing in Roma­nia, Green­peace vol­un­teers quar­an­tined a whole island where GM soya crops are being grown, which is ille­gal under EU law. Vehi­cles leav­ing Braila island were hosed down by peo­ple wear­ing white bio­haz­ard suits to pre­vent genet­ic con­t­a­m­i­na­tion spread­ing to the main­land. Even a don­key and cart were washed and made GM-free!

As well as soya, maize and sun­flow­ers are also grown there and the har­vest has just begun, so the cam­paign­ers in Roma­nia want­ed to stop any GM crops leav­ing the island and end­ing up in the food chain. Dri­vers were appar­ent­ly warned that they could­n’t leave the island with­out pass­ing through the ‘decon­t­a­m­i­na­tion sta­tion’ so there have been no reports of any soya-laden trucks try­ing to leave.

GM crops have popped up in Roma­nia before and since the coun­try joined the EU ear­li­er this year, they’re now ille­gal. There’s also a flour­ish­ing black mar­ket in GM seeds and the wide­spread pres­ence of GM food in Roman­ian mar­kets. But now these ille­gal crops have been exposed in such an eye-catch­ing man­ner, envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards offi­cers on the scene have told the media that they will take care of the sit­u­a­tion.

GM-spot­ters have been at work in France, paint­ing a field of GM maize bright red to mark its posi­tion. This crop — with the snazzy name MON810 — is also ille­gal as nei­ther the farmer nor the French gov­ern­ment have noti­fied the rel­e­vant author­i­ties that it has been plant­ed.

And apart from both being GM and ille­gal, what links these two agri­cul­tur­al inci­dents? Why, it’s our old friend, Mon­san­to, devel­op­er of the vari­eties of soya and maize in ques­tion. Fun­ny that.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/gm/gm-quarantine-in-romania-20070905