French Monsanto Research Site Damaged in Suspected Arson Attack

A Mon­san­to research cen­ter in west­ern France suf­fered heavy fire dam­age in a sus­pect­ed arson attack ear­ly Wednes­day morn­ing, the offi­cial in charge of the site said.

Monsanto Fire

Octo­ber 28th, 2015

A Mon­san­to research cen­ter in west­ern France suf­fered heavy fire dam­age in a sus­pect­ed arson attack ear­ly Wednes­day morn­ing, the offi­cial in charge of the site said.

The offi­cial, Jakob Wit­ten, said police inves­ti­ga­tors “strong­ly sus­pect it was a crime as no elec­tri­cal or oth­er sources were found.”

 The fire was ignit­ed from two dif­fer­ent places at the site, where about 10 peo­ple work and which is spe­cial­ized in corn research. The smell of gaso­line lin­gered near the build­ing, which had heavy dam­age in its recep­tion hall and offices.

“No Mon­san­to sites in Europe have so far been the vic­tim of fires of crim­i­nal ori­gin, this is unprece­dent­ed vio­lence,” Wit­ten said.

How­ev­er, forty tons of GM sug­ar beets were torched in Ore­gon, spark­ing an FBI inves­ti­ga­tion, so the sen­ti­ment behind this lat­est arson, if it indeed was an act of vio­lence, is not unprece­dent­ed.

The Creve Coeur-based com­pa­ny is the fre­quent tar­get of crit­i­cism in France over con­cerns about genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops it has devel­oped.

The gov­ern­ment said last month it would use a new Euro­pean opt-out scheme to ensure a ban on the cul­ti­va­tion of GM crops in France remains in place.