Blockade of Monsanto office in The Netherlands (& GM being grown this year in the UK)

Update: no arrests made, Mon­san­to closed for whole day, work­ers sent home, and some of the cor­po­rate sculp­tures got a re-paint!

On Mon­day 17 May a group of 50 peo­ple from the group “Roundup Mon­san­to” block­ad­ed the Mon­san­to office at Bergschen­hoek in the Nether­lands.

Verdelg Mon­san­to

Press Release: Block­ade of Mon­san­to’s Bergschen­hoek Loca­tion in The Nether­lands

Bergschen­hoek, Mon­day, May 17 — Since 6 o’clock this morn­ing, 50 per­sons of the action group ‘Roundup Mon­san­to’ are block­ing both gates of the Mon­san­to seed com­pa­ny near Rot­ter­dam. ‘Roundup Mon­san­to’ wants Mon­san­to to back out of the seed mar­ket, and demands an end to patents on seeds and liv­ing organ­isms. Mon­san­to and oth­er agro-chem­i­cal multi­na­tion­als are lob­by­ing the Dutch gov­ern­ment and the EU for leg­isla­tive changes that would make it eas­i­er for large com­pa­nies to take con­trol of the seed mar­ket and food production.[1]

The block­ade is tak­ing place at the for­mer De Ruiter Seeds, acquired by Mon­san­to in 2008, where research lab­o­ra­to­ries, offices, green­hous­es, and a cen­tral stor­age for seeds and seedlings are to be found.

The chem­i­cal com­pa­ny Mon­san­to has 23% of the world­wide mar­ket of com­mer­cial seeds in its hands. In the last 5 years, the com­pa­ny has bought up three large inter­na­tion­al­ly active seed com­pa­nies in the Nether­lands: De Ruiter Seeds, West­ern Seeds, and Sem­in­is. As a result, Mon­san­to now dom­i­nates the world mar­ket for veg­etable seeds and seedlings. In addi­tion, Mon­san­to is the mar­ket leader in genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered soy, corn, sug­ar beets, and cot­ton, and has a large mar­ket share in pes­ti­cide sales. “Farm­ers and veg­etable grow­ers are becom­ing increas­ing­ly depen­dent on these big seed com­pa­nies and patent­ed seeds will make the sit­u­a­tion even worse,” says Flip Vonk, an organ­ic farm employ­ee present at the action.

Mon­san­to is a chem­i­cal com­pa­ny which has grown large due to the pro­duc­tion of pes­ti­cides, Agent Orange, and PCBs. [2] After count­less scan­dals revolv­ing around these chem­i­cal sub­stances, the com­pa­ny found a new mar­ket strat­e­gy: devel­op­ment and sales of genet­i­cal­ly manip­u­lat­ed crops. These crops are cul­ti­vat­ed in enor­mous mono­cul­tures, with exces­sive use of fer­tilis­er and pes­ti­cides. Mon­san­to rep­re­sents a destruc­tive mod­el of chem­i­cal agri­cul­ture.

The cur­rent sys­tem of agri­cul­ture, based on mass import and export, is com­plete­ly depen­dent on the con­sump­tion of fos­sil fuels. Chem­i­cal agri­cul­ture is respon­si­ble for a quar­ter to a third of the release of all the green­house gas­es. Over 80% of the cul­ti­vat­ed GMOs are pes­ti­cide resistent, the remain­ing 20% pro­duce insec­ti­cide inside the plant. This form of food pro­duc­tion is extreme­ly harm­ful to peo­ple, nature, and the cli­mate. Genet­i­cal engi­neer­ing will not con­tribute any solu­tion to cli­mate change.

Genet­ic engi­neer­ing is often pre­sent­ed as a solu­tion to the glob­al food ques­tion. But in spite of 15 years of cul­ti­va­tion of genet­i­cal­ly manip­u­lat­ed crops, 2009 wit­nessed a record amount of star­va­tion. GM crops have not increased yields. “The food prob­lem requires com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent solu­tions. We need to dras­ti­cal­ly change course, away from large-scale chem­i­cal agri­cul­ture, towards local food pro­duc­tion in har­mo­ny with nature, with­out pes­ti­cides and with­out genet­i­cal­ly manip­u­lat­ed crops. A world with­out Mon­san­to is a good step in that direc­tion,” accord­ing to Miran­da de Boer from ‘Roundup Mon­san­to’.

The two most impor­tant access doors to the Mon­san­to ter­rain have been closed off. The action group put up ban­ners with the mes­sage “Imag­ine, monop­oly of food, poi­so­nous agri­cul­ture, The World accord­ing to … Mon­san­to”, adbust­ing the com­pa­ny’s logo. It has also adjust­ed the giant cucum­ber and toma­to on the lawn to Mon­san­to’s manip­u­lat­ed real­i­ty. Employ­ees and cus­tomers are greet­ed with cof­fee, tea, and back­ground infor­ma­tion on arrival.

**********
to the edi­tors:
action loca­tion: Leeuwen­hoek­weg 52, Bergschen­hoek (North of Rot­ter­dam)
con­tact: verdelg-monsanto@riseup.net

[1] For fur­ther infor­ma­tion about the devel­op­ment of patent law and breed­ers’ rights, con­sult a press release from A SEED Europe about the sub­ject: http://www.aseed.net/kwekersrecht-vs-patentrecht

[2] See the film ‘The World Accord­ing to Mon­san­to’

More back­ground infor­ma­tion can be found at:
— http://www.gentech.nl
— http://www.gmwatch.org
— http://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org
— http://www.aseed.net/monsanto
— http://www.combat-monsanto.co.uk
— http://www.toxicsoy.org

Action video — http://www.vimeo.com/12529960

——
Two GM pota­to tri­als this year

The UK gov­ern­ment in their GM mad­ness have just (7.4.10) approved a new GM pota­to tri­al to go ahead at the Leeds Uni­ver­si­ty farm near Tad­cast­er. It is also like­ly that they will approve a sec­ond, dif­fer­ent tri­al by the Sains­bury Lab­o­ra­to­ry at the John Innes Cen­tre, Nor­wich.

These tri­als are exper­i­men­tal tri­als, and not part of an appli­ca­tion to grow the pota­toes on a com­mer­cial scale. The GM pota­toes are still in the devel­op­ment stage and these tri­als are designed to find out whether the genet­ic manip­u­la­tion works in field con­di­tion. If this is con­firmed then they might go on to be devel­oped for com­mer­cial grow­ing.

Despite mas­sive pub­lic resis­tance and grow­ing evi­dence that GM does not increase yields, is extreme­ly dam­ag­ing to the envi­ron­ment and impov­er­ish­es farm­ers around the world, our gov­ern­ment is push­ing GM onto our plates. GM con­tin­ues to be very lucra­tive for multi­na­tion­al bio­chem­i­cal cor­po­ra­tions… while farm­ers around the world are ris­ing up in protest against this tech­nol­o­gy of con­trol.

The lat­est con pro­mot­ed by the GM spin­ners is that GM will pro­vide the answer to cli­mate change. Rather than cut­ting car­bon emis­sions, stu­pid…

Leeds tri­al:
The Cen­tre for Plant Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leeds has been giv­en con­sent by Defra to con­duct field tri­als of GM pota­toes engi­neered to resist pota­to cyst eel­worm or pota­to cyst nema­tode (PCN).

This is a dif­fer­ent GM pota­to to the one pre­vi­ous­ly tri­alled in 2008 and dif­fer­ent to the pota­toes pro­posed to be tri­alled in Nor­folk, but many of the prob­lems are the same.

The tri­als com­mence from 1 May to 3 Novem­ber 2010 and con­tin­ue for 3 years until 2012. They take place at the Leeds Uni­ver­si­ty Farm at Tad­cast­er, North York­shire cov­er­ing not more than 1,000 square metres with up to 4,000 GM plants per year.

They are engi­neered to be resis­tant to nema­todes, a pest affect­ing pota­toes that can effec­tive­ly dealt with through good farm­ing prac­tis­es

There is no need for GM to address this pest, nor is there any mar­ket for GM pota­toes, so the tri­al should not go ahead.

Full details of the tri­al can be found here (includ­ing grid ref­er­ences)
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/quality/gm/regulation/registers/consents/index.htm

Nor­wich tri­al
The Sains­bury Lab­o­ra­to­ry at the John Innes Cen­tre, Nor­wich has applied to Defra to con­duct field tri­als of GM pota­toes engi­neered to resist late pota­to blight. These pota­toes con­tain genes from a pota­to rel­a­tive from South Amer­i­ca and have been engi­neered to be resis­tant to blight, a pota­to dis­ease. They are dif­fer­ent from the genes in BAS­F’s GM blight resist pota­toes field test­ed near Cam­bridge in 2007 and 2008. The BASF tri­al was aban­doned last year, for unknown rea­sons.

The release of GM pota­toes would com­mence from 1 May 2010 and run to 30 Novem­ber 2010 and con­tin­ue for a fur­ther 2 years until 2012. The release would take place at the John Innes Cen­tre, Nor­folk, in an area of 1,000 square metres with 200 square metres used each year for GM pota­toes with not more than 200 GM plants per year.

The deci­sion is expect­ed in the next cou­ple of weeks.

A detailed brief­ing on the GM spuds can be down­loaded from

http://www.gmfreeze.org/page.asp?ID=417&iType=1083

The full appli­ca­tion to Defra can be found here (includ­ing grid ref­er­ences)

http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/quality/gm/regulation/registers/applications/index.htm

Lib­er­ate the fields!