Category: Genetics

Today, 12th July 2010, dozens of peo­ple came togeth­er to sab­o­tage two exper­i­men­tal GM Maize tri­als belong­ing to Syn­gen­ta, locat­ed in the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Tor­roel­la de Mont­grí (Baix Empordà, Girona, Catalun­ya).

We destroyed Syn­gen­ta’s open-air genet­ic exper­i­ment because we under­stand that this kind of direct action is the best way to respond to the fait accom­pli pol­i­cy through which the Gen­er­al­i­tat, the State and the bio-tech multi­na­tion­als have been uni­lat­er­al­ly impos­ing genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­isms (GMOs) in our agri­cul­ture and our food.

The Span­ish State, with more than 75,000 hectares sown in 2009, rep­re­sents a con­cen­tra­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 80% of the sur­face area of GMOs har­vest­ed in Europe. After Aragon, Cat­alo­nia is the area of Europe that har­vests the largest area of GMOs, around 27,000 hectares. In recent years, 42% of the exper­i­men­tal GMO field tri­als in the EU have been plant­ed in the Span­ish State.

Syn­gen­ta are the third largest seed cor­po­ra­tion in the world (after Mon­san­to and Dupont). Their objec­tive is to gain a monop­oly dom­i­na­tion of the glob­al seed mar­ket so that all farm­ers and all agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion on the plan­et depends on their seed sales. Syn­gen­ta, and oth­er transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions (TNCs) that con­trol a) the glob­al mar­ket in agri­cul­tur­al goods (seeds, fer­til­iz­ers, agro-chem­i­cals…) , b) the cir­cuits for the dis­tri­b­u­tion and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of food and agri­cul­tur­al raw mate­ri­als, and c) the glob­al mar­ket in final prod­ucts, is one of the prin­ci­pal pro­mot­ers and ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the cor­po­rate indus­tri­al mod­el that cur­rent­ly dom­i­nates. After hav­ing been imposed for decades on a plan­e­tary scale, more and more voic­es indi­cate that 1) this dev­as­tat­ing social and pro­duc­tive mod­el is one of the prin­ci­pal caus­es of the food, eco­log­i­cal and cli­mate crises that human­i­ty cur­rent­ly faces, and 2) genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops rep­re­sent a new turn of the screw of the agro-indus­tri­al mod­el, which does noth­ing more than deep­en the dev­as­tat­ing social, cul­tur­al and envi­ron­men­tal impacts asso­ci­at­ed with transna­tion­al agro-busi­ness.

Accord­ing to Euro­pean leg­is­la­tion, exper­i­men­tal GMO field tri­als rep­re­sent an indis­pens­able inter­me­di­ate step in gain­ing EEC approval to grow and har­vest as yet unau­tho­rized vari­eties of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops in the EU. Many groups in Europe have for years con­demned the pro­to­col that the bio-tech transna­tion­als must fol­low to gain approval for their genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied seeds, as being full of irreg­u­lar­i­ties and pit falls. Among these, the most notable are the var­i­ous scan­dals that have hit the Euro­pean food secu­ri­ty Agency, (EFSA) which have made it quite clear that this sup­pos­ed­ly sci­en­tif­ic body is in the pay of the genet­ics indus­try. On the oth­er hand, it is impor­tant to uncov­er the role of the EEC itself in the under­hand pro­mo­tion of GM crops by the EEC itself.

Twelve years since GM maize crops were first plant­ed in Cat­alo­nia, the appear­ance of dozens of cas­es of genet­ic con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of organ­ic and con­ven­tion­al agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts (con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of seed batch­es, fields, ani­mal feeds and prod­ucts des­tined for human con­sump­tion) has repeat­ed­ly demon­strat­ed that the sup­posed coex­is­tence between GM and non-GM crops is total­ly impos­si­ble and unde­sir­able. The pro­lif­er­a­tion of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied agri­cul­ture in our ter­ri­to­ry has led to the extinc­tion of a num­ber of vari­eties of tra­di­tion­al wheat (“morat” and “del queix­al”) and a reduc­tion of 95% in the cul­ti­va­tion of organ­ic maize between 2002 and 2008.

All this leads unequiv­o­cal­ly to the con­clu­sion that GM agri­cul­ture makes it impos­si­ble to devel­op and con­sol­i­date social mod­els and mod­els of pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion and con­sump­tion that dif­fer from the dom­i­nant mod­el, based on agro-ecol­o­gy and the strug­gle for peo­ples’ food sov­er­eign­ty. Because of this, we fun­da­men­tal­ly reject both GM crops and the tech­no-indus­tri­al cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety that makes them pos­si­ble and nec­es­sary (… nec­es­sary to ensure that the pow­er­ful few con­sol­i­date their dom­i­na­tion of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion, and per­fect the busi­ness strate­gies). We there­fore call for peo­ple to take the step to action to destroy their genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops and the social order per­pet­u­at­ed by those that pro­mote them.

—–

In a storm of media con­tra­dic­to­ry counter-infor­ma­tion, plus the news that a few weeks ear­li­er a GM crop was decon­t­a­m­i­nat­ed in Zaragoza, that it was about a hun­dred peo­ple involved (on the French Faucheurs Vol­un­taires web­site, monde-solidaire.org, who claim they were there) the fol­low­ing state­ment was released:

18.7.10
THE REAL MISTAKE IS PLANTING GM

The field of maize locat­ed at Tor­roel­la de Mont­grí, destroyed on the 12th July, was GM. The own­er of the land has him­self recog­nised the fact in his state­ments to the press. Regard­less of whether it was an exper­i­men­tal tri­al, a demon­stra­tion or a com­mer­cial field, the very fact that it was a Genet­i­cal­ly Mod­i­fied (GM) crop, jus­ti­fies and legit­imis­es its destruc­tion — par­tic­u­lar­ly as it was locat­ed next to a nature reserve and oth­er non-GM crops.

Genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied agri­cul­ture, even using approved vari­eties, has been asso­ci­at­ed with seri­ous social and envi­ron­men­tal impacts and dam­age to human health. The dozens of cas­es of genet­ic cross-con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of organ­ic and con­ven­tion­al agri­cul­ture that have come to light in Cat­alo­nia and the Span­ish State since GM crops were first plant­ed and import­ed here, demon­strate that coex­is­tence between GM and non-GM crops is not viable, ren­der­ing impos­si­ble the devel­op­ment of dif­fer­ent modes of pro­duc­tion, con­sump­tion and social mod­els that offer alter­na­tives to the dom­i­nant, cor­po­rate and indus­tri­al mod­el, which is gen­er­at­ing such seri­ous eco­log­i­cal, cli­mat­ic and social crises.

The media cov­er­age of the action on 12th July demon­strates once again that the press silences crit­i­cism and ignores the real and impor­tant debates that exist around the impacts of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied agri­cul­ture.

The media must take respon­si­bil­i­ty for their lack of rig­or­ous report­ing and their fail­ure to cor­rob­o­rate the infor­ma­tion they receive before pub­lish­ing it as news. On 15th July (three days after the action) there began an avalanche of reports stat­ing that the « rad­i­cal ecol­o­gists » had made a mis­take and destroyed a non-exper­i­men­tal field. There are many indi­ca­tions to sug­gest that this may be a cov­er-up ploy by the Fun­dació Anta­ma, the Span­ish bio-tech lob­by, Syn­gen­ta and the landown­er him­self. In fact, the tac­tic of lying and deny­ing that fields are exper­i­men­tal has been used on a num­ber of occa­sions in oth­er coun­tries such as the Unit­ed King­dom and France. It aims to con­fuse pub­lic opin­ion, dis­cred­it the action and those who pro­mote it, and divert the debate.

There is con­sid­er­able evi­dence that the field destroyed on the 12th was not a com­mer­cial field: in May, it was con­firmed that the dif­fer­ent rows of maize sown were iden­ti­fied and dis­tin­guished with white, num­bered signs, a prac­tice sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly applied to exper­i­men­tal and demon­stra­tion fields, but nev­er used in com­mer­cial fields. Lat­er, just after the Diari de Girona pub­lished the exact loca­tion of the Tor­roel­la exper­i­men­tal tri­al, the white num­bered signs had been removed. Were they try­ing to get rid of the evi­dence that they were exper­i­ment­ing or cul­ti­vat­ing GMOs for demon­stra­tion pur­pos­es?

It is worth not­ing the numer­ous con­tra­dic­tions that have appeared in the media on the ques­tion of who, when and why the exper­i­ment was not autho­rised. Some news­pa­pers assure us that Syn­gen­ta aban­doned the exper­i­ment; oth­ers say that it was the farmer him­self who backed off; final­ly, pub­li­ca­tions such as El País claim, with­out cit­ing sources, that it was the Gen­er­al­i­tat (Cata­lan Local Gov­ern­ment) which with­drew autho­ri­sa­tion for the exper­i­ment, because the field was sit­ed very near to a pro­tect­ed area.

What this demon­strates is the lam­en­ta­ble lack of reli­able pub­lic infor­ma­tion about the loca­tions of exper­i­men­tal fields and the lack of con­trol and mon­i­tor­ing of GM agri­cul­ture and its impacts, by the com­pe­tent author­i­ties. In accor­dance with an explic­it EC man­date — after hav­ing refused to do it for years — this year for the first time, the Min­istry for Agri­cul­ture (MARM) pro­vid­ed Friends of the Earth with infor­ma­tion about exist­ing exper­i­men­tal tri­als, in response to a for­mal peti­tion made by the orga­ni­za­tion request­ing envi­ron­men­tal infor­ma­tion. Nev­er­the­less, we con­demn the fact that the infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed relates only to the exper­i­men­tal tri­als autho­rised, and not to requests for autho­ri­sa­tion. This means that even now the Span­ish State is fail­ing to com­ply with Euro­pean leg­is­la­tion which states that access to infor­ma­tion about the loca­tion and char­ac­ter­is­tics of exper­i­men­tal GM fields is a pub­lic right. Sim­i­lar­ly, nei­ther the Span­ish State nor the Gen­er­al­i­tat meet the legal require­ments for the labelling of foods con­tain­ing GMOs, or inform­ing farm­ers about GM crops sown in their area. They also fail to apply the plans for mon­i­tor­ing and con­trol of the impacts asso­ci­at­ed with genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied agri­cul­ture.

To the calls for jus­tice made by some of the noto­ri­ous­ly reac­tionary farm­ers’ unions such as the JARC, we answer that the admin­is­tra­tions have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly failed to apply the many arti­cles of the Law reg­u­lat­ing the release of GMOs into the envi­ron­ment. These include the fail­ure to devel­op the nec­es­sary mea­sures pri­or to the sow­ing of open-air GM tri­als, and to car­ry out suf­fi­cient mon­i­tor­ing once the crop has been sown. It is quite clear that the com­mer­cial fields, exper­i­men­tal tri­als and demon­stra­tions of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops cur­rent­ly being cul­ti­vat­ed in Cat­alo­nia and the Span­ish State, are break­ing the law. Fur­ther­more, the above-men­tioned leg­is­la­tion was devel­oped by « pub­lic » insti­tu­tions that have been work­ing for 12 years hand in hand with the bio-tech multi­na­tion­als to impose GMOs on our agri­cul­ture and food. We there­fore defend the legit­i­ma­cy and the neces­si­ty of destroy­ing all fields of GM crops, even in the hypo­thet­i­cal case that they did com­ply with the leg­is­la­tion in force.

We repeat, that the coex­is­tence of GM and non-GM agri­cul­ture is total­ly impos­si­ble. The expan­sion of GM crops in Cat­alo­nia has, between 2002 and 2008, caused a reduc­tion of 95% in the sow­ing of organ­ic maize, and led to the per­ma­nent extinc­tion of at least two tra­di­tion­al Cata­lan vari­eties of maize that were unique in the world, as well as dozens of known cas­es of genet­ic con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. Many stud­ies show that for years GM crops and GM foods have been linked to sig­nif­i­cant social and eco­log­i­cal impacts and dam­age to health; stud­ies that have led 11 Euro­pean coun­tries to ban their cul­ti­va­tion.