Anti-GM protest shuts down BASF UK headquarters (& photos & video links)

At the crack of dawn, Tues­day, 6th May, after a long night of prepa­ra­tion, Earth First! activists from all across Eng­land jumped into two vehi­cles and speed towards south Man­ches­ter, dead set on tak­ing some effec­tive action against the eco­log­i­cal­ly destruc­tive plans of noto­ri­ous chem­i­cal com­pa­ny BASF. There was no desire for sym­bol­ic protest, but sim­ple action that hit hard at the one thing they val­ue the most, their pock­ets.

At 7.20 am they turned hard into the only entrance to BASF’s head­quar­ters in Stock­port, vehi­cles block­ing the entrance while var­i­ous affin­i­ty groups piled out and got to work. A team of eleven peo­ple with lock-on tubes took the ground in front of the long gate, while oth­ers D‑locked sev­er­al side gates that were for pedes­tri­an use only.

Mean­while, some peo­ple spoke to the guards and were told that he want­ed to shut the gate. Which was excel­lent news, and there was a rapid change of plan. The arm-tubes were put back in the vehi­cles, which dis­ap­peared off, to be used for the next action, and once the gate was closed a seri­ous­ly heavy-duty motor­bike chain was wrapped around it and one activist D‑locked him­self to it. And that was us there until 12noon, job done, BASF’s UK head­quar­ters shut down for the morn­ing.

A 30x10 foot ban­ner say­ing Stop GM was hung from a near­by fly­over so every­one would get the mes­sage as to why were there. Though, giv­en we were on the bor­der with Cheshire, one con­fused local inhab­i­tant was curi­ous as to what we had against Greater Man­ches­ter!

The only trou­ble came from the var­i­ous BASF exec­u­tives clear­ly eager to get to their phone con­fer­ences and thought dri­ving at peo­ple con­sti­tutes accept­able behav­iour. With such a casu­al atti­tude towards pro­tes­tors stand­ing in their way it is hard­ly sur­pris­ing that they do not give a damn about what effect their prod­ucts have on the rest of the world.

The weath­er was won­der­ful, sun­ny and warm, and we relaxed on the road while all the BASF work­ers were told to drink cof­fee in M&S or sit in the B&Q carpark – which nat­u­ral­ly were leaflet­ed so they had some­thing to read while they wait­ed. The police, when they turned up, were polite and clear­ly out­num­bered by the pro­tes­tors, so let them get on with it. There was a police liai­son to keep things hap­py, and when the block­ade was lift­ed, and every­one left with all their equip­ment – includ­ing the D‑Locks and chains – and their were no arrests. The only thing they want­ed was the large Sains­burys ban­ner which had been redec­o­rat­ed with anti-GM mes­sages, which they want­ed to return to Sains­burys in case it had been stolen. We could not say fair­er than the police deliv­er­ing our anti-GM mes­sage back to the super­mar­ket chain…

Though we were only there for the morn­ing, the activists left on our own terms, know­ing that the impact would con­tin­ue to rever­ber­ate through the com­pa­ny. Evi­dence from oth­er actions shows that the impact does not stop once the block­ade is lift­ed, but the entire day will be lost. Meet­ing will have to be resched­uled, work-time caught up on, oth­er offices will be furi­ous about not being able to get in touch, and so on. And the boss­es will still be paid for the time spent twid­dling their thumbs. An excel­lent day out… if it could not be spent on the allot­ment, the next best place is lying on a road­way.

The pres­sure on GM com­pa­nies has not gone away.

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Press release:

BASF UK HQ cur­rent­ly com­plete­ly block­ad­ed by pro­test­ers.

This morn­ing 30 pro­test­ers from Earth First! have shut down the BASF UK head­quar­ters (1) at Chea­dle Hulme near Man­ches­ter (2), to high­light the com­pa­ny’s role in push­ing GM onto our plates. BASF is plan­ning to run the UK’s only tri­al of GM crops this year, a tri­al of blight resis­tant potatoes.(3)

The pro­test­ers arrived ear­ly in the morn­ing at the flag­ship offices and have since been blockad­ing the gate by sit­ting in front of it and lock­ing on using d‑locks and oth­er equip­ment. They are suc­cess­ful­ly pre­vent­ing any staff from
enter­ing and are demand­ing the com­pa­ny pull out of GM imme­di­ate­ly. They have also hung a giant 30 x 10ft ban­ner read­ing “No To GM”. The pro­test­ers are plan­ning to block­ade the gate for sev­er­al hours.

Mary Sun­der­land from Earth First! Said: “GM has no part to play in our future: it’s a dan­ger­ous, unwant­ed and unproven tech­nol­o­gy geared towards max­imis­ing prof­its for multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions such as BASF. It is not the answer to food short­ages, hunger or cli­mate change. The real solu­tion is to change now to a sus­tain­able farm­ing sys­tem and to dis­trib­ute resources fair­ly around the world.”

The bio-tech indus­try claims GM will feed the world’s poor, but experts dis­agree. A major new study pub­lished in April shows that mod­i­fied soya pro­duces 10 per cent less food than its con­ven­tion­al equiv­a­lent, con­firm­ing ear­li­er stud­ies show­ing the same trend. The study finds that the very process of mod­i­fi­ca­tion depress­es productivity.(4)

This rev­e­la­tion came just a week after the biggest study of its kind ever conducted,the Inter­na­tion­al Assess­ment of Agri­cul­tur­al Sci­ence, con­clud­ed that GM was not an answer to world hunger. The UN study, con­duct­ed by over 400 sci­en­tists and approved by over 54 gov­ern­ments is a sober­ing account of the fail­ure of indus­tri­al farm­ing. The key mes­sage of the report is that small-scale farm­ers and agro-eco­log­i­cal meth­ods pro­vide the way for­ward to avert the cur­rent food cri­sis and deal with the effects of cli­mate change.(5)

Neil Ross from Earth First! UK adds: “It’s time for every­one who is con­cerned about the future of our food and envi­ron­ment to stand up again and to say ‘No to GM’. When five years ago 86 per cent of the UK pub­lic said that they did not want GM foods the gov­ern­ment and bio-tech indus­try brushed those con­cerns aside as unsci­en­tif­ic. Sci­ence is now prov­ing that we were right to oppose GM. Thanks to the courage of many ordi­nary peo­ple who ripped up GM crops our coun­try­side has been GM free for the past four years. (6) We are deter­mined to keep it that way. The mes­sage to BASF and
the gov­ern­ment could­n’t be clear­er. Stop wast­ing mon­ey on GM (7) and start invest­ing in the real solu­tions to hunger: small-scale organ­ic farm­ing and equi­table trade.”

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Notes

(1)BASF is the world’s lead­ing chem­i­cal com­pa­ny.
(2) Head­ing south from Man­ches­ter on the A34 , turn right onto Stan­ley Road (B5094). Take the sec­ond left onto Earl Road. Con­tin­ue under the fly­over (Man­ches­ter Air­port East­ern Link Road) and BASF HQ is on your right.
(3) The UK tri­als of BAS­F’s blight resis­tant pota­toes were due to take place from last spring at two loca­tions for a peri­od of five years. One site is a research cen­tre in Cam­bridge, where last year anti-gm cam­paign­ers suc­ceed­ed in destroy­ing the field dur­ing a night time raid. The sec­ond tri­al site was nev­er plant­ed as BASF was unable to find a site for it. Cam­paign­ers have already vowed to decon­t­a­m­i­nate the Cam­bridge site again, should BASF go ahead with the con­tro­ver­sial tri­al. Many believe that the tri­als are unnec­es­sary as blight resis­tant pota­toes are already avail­able
through con­ven­tion­al breed­ing.
(4) The study was car­ried out over the past three years by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas in the US grain belt and pub­lished by Pro­fes­sor B Gor­don in the jour­nal ‘Bet­ter Crops’. He grew a Mon­san­to GM soy bean resis­tant to the her­bi­cide Round-up and com­pared it with a con­ven­tion­al vari­ety. The GM bean pro­duced only 70 bushels per acre com­pared to 77 bushels for the con­ven­tion­al bean.
(5) The report from the Unit­ed Nations World Food Pro­gramme, the Inter­na­tion­al Assess­ment of Agri­cul­tur­al Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy for Devel­op­ment (IAASTD) called for a back-to-basics approach to farm­ing to meet the chal­lenges of cli­mate change and esca­lat­ing food prices. The authors saw lit­tle role for GM tech­nol­o­gy in feed­ing the poor. The report
was based on a rig­or­ous and peer-reviewed analy­sis of the empir­i­cal evi­dence by hun­dreds of sci­en­tists and devel­op­ment experts. http://www.agassessment.org/
(6) When GM crop tri­als start­ed in the UK in 1998, no one could have pre­dict­ed the pub­lic oppo­si­tion to it. With­in just 5 years, all GM com­pa­nies includ­ing Mon­san­to, Syn­gen­ta and Bay­er had retreat­ed from Britain, numer­ous field tri­als had been destroyed and a mora­to­ri­um against GM crop grow­ing had been imposed.10 years lat­er, Britain is still free from any com­mer­cial grow­ing of GM crops. This oppo­si­tion has also sparked mas­sive resis­tance else­where in Europe.
(7) Using the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act Friends of the Earth man­aged to obtained still par­tial infor­ma­tion in Octo­ber 2007 which shows that the Gov­ern­ment gave at least £50 mil­lion a year for research into GM crops and food, com­pared with £1.6 mil­lion for research into organ­ic agri­cul­ture last year, in spite of repeat­ed promis­es to pro­mote envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, sus­tain­able farm­ing. http://www.i‑sis.org.uk/dirty_GM_secrets.php

manchester[at!]earthfirst.org.uk
http://www.earthfirst.org.uk

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