Brazil’s Landless Movement Destroys GMO Eucaliptus Seedlings, Occupies GMO Meeting

March 5th, 2015

This morn­ing about 300 peas­ants orga­nized by La Via Campesina occu­pied the meet­ing of the Brazil Nation­al Biosafe­ty Tech­ni­cal Com­mis­sion (CTNBio), which was con­ven­ing to dis­cuss the release of three new vari­eties of trans­genic plants in Brazil includ­ing genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered euca­lyp­tus trees. The meet­ing was inter­rupt­ed and deci­sions were post­poned. Ear­li­er in the morn­ing on Thurs­day, anoth­er 1,000 women of the Brazil Land­less Work­ers’ Move­ment (MST) from the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais occu­pied the oper­a­tions of Futura­Gene Tech­nol­o­gy Brazil Ltda, a sub­sidiary of Suzano tim­ber cor­po­ra­tion, in the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Itape­tininga, in São Paulo.

The site occu­pied by women of the MST was in Itape­tininga, where trans­genic euca­lyp­tus, known as H421 is being devel­oped and test­ed. Dur­ing the protest, the MST destroyed the seedlings of trans­genic euca­lyp­tus trees there. The action denounced the evils that a pos­si­ble release of trans­genic euca­lyp­tus, which was to be vot­ed on CTNBio today, could cause to the envi­ron­ment. Accord­ing to Atil­iana Brunet­to, a mem­ber of the Nation­al MST, the his­toric deci­sion of the Com­mis­sion must respect the Brazil­ian leg­is­la­tion and the Bio­di­ver­si­ty Con­ven­tion to which Brazil is a sig­na­to­ry. Destroys Eucalip­tus Seedlings The vast major­i­ty of its mem­bers are placed in favor of busi­ness inter­ests of the large multi­na­tion­als at the expense of envi­ron­men­tal, social and pub­lic health con­se­quences,” he says. For Brunet­to all approved GMO means more pes­ti­cides in agri­cul­ture, since the pack­ets always approved for mar­ket­ing include a type of agri­cul­tur­al poi­son.

“Brazil is the largest con­sumer of world’s pes­ti­cides since 2009. A recent sur­vey by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Brasil­ia found that, in the most opti­mistic case, 30% of the food con­sumed by Brazil­ians are unsafe to eat only con­t­a­m­i­na­tion by pes­ti­cides account” said Brunet­to.

In the case of euca­lyp­tus, the appli­ca­tion of trans­genic release was made by pulp and paper com­pa­ny Suzano.

“If approved by the com­mit­tee these GE faster grow­ing euca­lyp­tus will mature in only 4 years, as opposed to 6–7 years present­ly in non-GMO euca­lyp­tus. The water con­sump­tion will increase 25 to 30 liters / day per euca­lyp­tus plant­ed that it cur­rent­ly uses. We are again call­ing atten­tion to the dan­ger of green deserts,” said Catiane Cinel­li, a mem­ber of the Rur­al Women’s Move­ment.

More at Stop GE Trees