USA: Protesters Blockade Monsanto Seed Facility in California

Opponents of genetically engineered foods blocked shipments and deliveries yesterday at Monsanto Co’s vegetable seed company that developed a new genetically modified sweet corn that will hit stores this fall.

The pro­test­ers, who want to remove all so-called genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­isms (GMOs) from the food sup­ply, say their action is a pre­view of about five dozen oth­er events planned for coun­tries around the world next week.

They also hope to drum up sup­port for a Cal­i­for­nia bal­lot mea­sure that would require food sell­ers to label a broad range of prod­ucts, includ­ing soup, soy milk, break­fast cere­als and chips, that con­tain GMOs.

Mon­san­to and oth­er devel­op­ers of these biotech crops say they are safe. But U.S. reg­u­la­tors do not require any inde­pen­dent safe­ty tests that would put a lid on doubts raised by con­sumers and some sci­en­tif­ic and health groups.

More than 40 coun­tries around the world have some require­ments for label­ing foods con­tain­ing ingre­di­ents from genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops. But U.S. reg­u­la­tors have reject­ed requests by many groups for sim­i­lar label­ing rules, and as a result many Amer­i­cans do not know that they have been eat­ing GMOs for years.

At the protest on Wednes­day, about a dozen peo­ple orga­nized by a net­work of anti-GMO activists called Occu­py Mon­san­to stopped trucks from enter­ing or leav­ing Monsanto’s Oxnard, Cal­i­for­nia-based Sem­in­is for near­ly six hours.

The activists, some dressed in bio­haz­ard suits, blocked truck entrances with cars and chained them­selves to the vehi­cles.

Police arrest­ed nine of the pro­test­ers and charged them with tres­pass­ing, orga­niz­ers said.

Sem­in­is’ biotech sweet corn is one of the newest GMO crop prod­ucts to make it to mar­ket. The corn was altered genet­i­cal­ly to with­stand dous­ings of a com­mon weed­killer and to ward off cer­tain pests.

“We deserve to know what we are eat­ing and we should put GMO crops back in the lab and off the kitchen table,” pro­test­er Rica Madrid said.

Occu­py Mon­san­to is not affil­i­at­ed with the back­ers of a Cal­i­for­nia pro­pos­al to label foods that are made with crops or from ani­mals that have had their genet­ic make­up altered in the lab­o­ra­to­ry.

Mon­san­to did not direct­ly address Wednesday’s events but said the company’s work helped improve farm pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and food qual­i­ty.

“We respect each individual’s right to express their point of view on these top­ics,” Thomas Helsch­er, a Mon­san­to spokesman, said of the Sem­in­is protest.

DIFFERENT VIEW IN EUROPE

GMOs are deeply unpop­u­lar in Europe and many oth­er coun­tries, but they even­tu­al­ly came to dom­i­nate key crops in the Unit­ed States after Mon­san­to in 1996 intro­duced a soy­bean genet­i­cal­ly altered to tol­er­ate Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer.

Using genes from oth­er species, Mon­san­to and rivals includ­ing DuPont and Dow Chem­i­cal have since intro­duced an array of genet­i­cal­ly altered crop vari­eties.

The most pop­u­lar genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered crops in the Unit­ed States include corn, soy­beans, sug­ar beets and canola – sta­ple ingre­di­ents in a wide array of pop­u­lar pack­aged foods.

Pro­po­nents of GM crops say they make farm­ing more effi­cient by mak­ing plants resis­tant to pes­ti­cides, pests and harsh grow­ing con­di­tions, such as drought. They say genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops are no dif­fer­ent from con­ven­tion­al types and that increas­ing demand for food, bio­fu­els and live­stock feed can only be met with help from the biotech indus­try that Mon­san­to dom­i­nates.

Crit­ics say GM crops have not always lived up to their promise and that the ben­e­fits to farm­ers do not out­weigh myr­i­ad risks to human and ani­mal health and to the envi­ron­ment.

Assess­ing such risks is dif­fi­cult in the Unit­ed States. The gov­ern­ment does not require GMO crops to under­go inde­pen­dent safe­ty test­ing before they are approved, and it does not require label­ing for GMO con­tent which makes it next to impos­si­ble to track any links to human health prob­lems.

The World Health Orga­ni­za­tion says “indi­vid­ual GM foods and their safe­ty should be assessed on a case-by-case basis.”

Recent­ly, some U.S. sci­en­tists have raised alarm bells over what they see as poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous impli­ca­tions from overuse of GMO crops.

Among the con­cerns is the fact that the rapid adop­tion by U.S. farm­ers of genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered corn, soy­beans and cot­ton has pro­mot­ed increased use of her­bi­cides, which crit­ics say has trig­gered an epi­dem­ic of her­bi­cide-resis­tant weeds and more chem­i­cal residues in foods.

This week, the Cen­ter for Food Safe­ty vowed to sue the U.S. gov­ern­ment if it approves a new type of genet­i­cal­ly altered corn devel­oped by Dow.