Category: Genetics

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

[from Earth First! Newswire: Edi­tor’s Note: The fol­low­ing piece is a loose and expand­ed trans­la­tion of an arti­cle post­ed by 325 on Octo­ber 28th.]

The evo­lu­tion of sci­ence, as a dom­i­na­tive means of objec­ti­fi­ca­tion, has solid­i­fied into a self-prov­ing enti­ty that is inter­ven­ing with the very cycli­cal net­works of nature.  We, as sen­tient peo­ple, are in revolt against its con­fin­ing move­ment and role as a facil­i­ta­tor of mil­i­ta­riza­tion, psy­chi­a­try, specism, anthro­pocen­trism, and het­ero­nor­ma­tiv­i­ty with­in this cur­rent patri­ar­chal era.

With such moti­va­tion, we are cur­rent­ly focus­ing our actions on biotech labs that are lead­ing stud­ies in genet­ic inter­ven­tion, and fer­til­iz­ing a branch of sci­ence that manip­u­lates the very fibers of life.  Not only are humans regen­er­at­ing stem cells, med­dling with plant prop­er­ties, and exper­i­ment­ing on ani­mals, but are doing so with the sole inten­tion of “improv­ing” our exis­tence.  Such a men­tal­i­ty is a soci­etal con­struct based upon the notion that human­i­ty cra­dles the author­i­ty to trans­gress fel­low beings.

In raw defi­ance, we chose spe­cif­ic loca­tions in which there is a con­cen­tra­tion of genet­ic research and, on the morn­ing of Octo­ber 28^th, paint­ed the façades with green and yel­low to por­tray our sol­i­dar­i­ty with nature and our ded­i­ca­tion to active rebel­lion from here on out.

Lema, one of these labs, con­cen­trates on bio­chem­i­cal research in the fields of endocrinol­o­gy and nefrol­o­gy, and is heav­i­ly involved in remold­ing human genet­ics;  hor­mon­al exper­i­ments, adjust­ment of the body’s chem­i­cal make-up, and nuclear med­i­cine are all unrav­el­ing with­in its walls.

We also arrived at the cor­ner of San Pablo to smear the win­dows of Cam­pus Lab, a build­ing whose activ­i­ty also revolves around invad­ing the body with tech­nol­o­gy called PCR.  This instru­ment was designed to play with our mol­e­c­u­lar design in hopes of pre­vent­ing infec­tion and post­pon­ing the beau­ti­ful and inevitable descent of mor­tal­i­ty.

We are fab­ri­cat­ing arti­fi­cial puri­ty, a per­me­at­ing image of the human body that rede­fines our eco­log­i­cal rela­tions and the con­cept of ‘health’ and ‘nat­ur­al movement’—although dis­as­so­ci­at­ing our­selves from our sur­round­ings is rather impos­si­ble.  Fur­ther­more, the equip­ment of Cam­pus Lab serves to iden­ti­fy indi­vid­u­als with the inten­tion of lubri­cat­ing the judi­cial machine and increas­ing incar­cer­a­tion rates.

In Nunoa, Gen­eX­press oper­ates as anoth­er com­pa­ny ded­i­cat­ed to sup­ply­ing the biotech indus­try with more data, fund­ing, and pro­gres­sive mate­ri­als.  It aims to infuse the med­ical field with genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fy­ing inno­va­tions, while avoid­ing pub­lic scruti­ny.  We pro­ceed­ed to smear their walls as well.

We real­ize that our action was a small ges­ture; how­ev­er, we are being called to exer­cise our resources from an array of perch­es, and are pre­pared for more elab­o­rate forms of destruc­tion.  And so, today we have decid­ed to orga­nize and resist the very struc­tures of sci­ence, a per­cep­tu­al approach that is fos­ter­ing ten­sion not only on the eco­nom­ic lev­el, but also at the roots of how we per­ceive our­selves and, con­se­quent­ly, how we project and inter­act with the envi­ron­ment.

We don’t sim­ply seek to gen­er­ate ‘alter­na­tive’ prac­tices, but rather to destroy the shad­ow­ing pil­lars through direct action.  Nor do we believe that some­one who choos­es to ingest tapsin to alle­vi­ate the flu is a mere con­for­mant; we move to ques­tion imped­ing par­a­digms, as well as the very ide­o­log­i­cal strands and every­day actions that main­tain them. To our bod­ies being explo­sions of thought and sen­sa­tions of cre­ative retal­i­a­tion!