FBI Calls Destruction of GMO Sugar Beets in Oregon ‘Economic Sabotage’

12 July 2013 In a break­ing devel­op­ment, the FBI con­firms that 1,500 GM Sug­ar Beet plants were destroyed this month in Ore­gon, in what they are call­ing an act of “Eco­nom­ic Sab­o­tage.”

12 July 2013 In a break­ing devel­op­ment, the FBI con­firms that 1,500 GM Sug­ar Beet plants were destroyed this month in Ore­gon, in what they are call­ing an act of “Eco­nom­ic Sab­o­tage.”

When GM pollen blows into a non-GM farmer’s fields and irre­versibly con­t­a­m­i­nates his crop with ‘biopol­lu­tion,’ who does the law side with? His­tor­i­cal­ly, Mon­san­to. Also, it’s not called ‘eco­nom­ic sab­o­tage’ but rather ‘copy­right infringe­ment,’ and the vic­tim not the aggres­sor is threat­ened with eco­nom­ic ruin.

When Monsanto’s unap­proved and there­fore ille­gal GM wheat is found years after open field tri­als grow­ing freely in an Ore­gon wheat field, the entire state crop’s export fate is held in lim­bo, jeop­ar­diz­ing the present and future liv­ing of thou­sands of farm­ers and their depen­dents, with Mon­san­to receiv­ing lit­tle more than a rep­ri­mand, fol­lowed by rapid USDA assur­ance that despite a lack of approval their GM wheat is “safe.”

Giv­en the unfair rules of the game, no won­der some folks in Ore­gon, hav­ing been treat­ed much like feu­dal peas­ants late­ly, are tak­ing things quite lit­er­al­ly into their own hands.

So, when the FBI inves­ti­gates the destruc­tion of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied sug­ar beets from two fields in South­ern Oregon’s Jack­son Coun­ty this month, the act is imme­di­ate­ly labeled “eco­nom­ic sab­o­tage,” pre­sum­ably against the multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion who owned the plants.

How fit­ting an FBI descrip­tion, con­sid­er­ing that Mon­san­to already plant­ed these ‘evil seeds’ of doubt by sug­gest­ing their unap­proved GM wheat in Ore­gon was a result of sab­o­tage, and not neg­li­gence (orinten­tion­al con­t­a­m­i­na­tion) on their part.

Accord­ing to the Spokesman Review, “The agency [FBI] said in a state­ment Thurs­day that about 1,000 sug­ar beet plants were destroyed on June 8, and more than 5,000 plants were destroyed on a dif­fer­ent plot three nights lat­er.”  

The arti­cle went on to explain that the plants were owned by the Swiss-based biotech com­pa­ny Sygen­ta, and that the FBI spoke­woman, Beth Anne Steele, would not com­ment on the man­ner in which the crops were destroyed “…because we don’t want to encour­age copy­cats.”  How­ev­er, an arti­cle pub­lished on OregonLive.com demys­ti­fied the FBI’s account, quot­ing Paul Mine­hart, head of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions in North Amer­i­ca for Syn­gen­ta: “It doesn’t look like a vehi­cle was used. It looks like peo­ple entered the field and destroyed the plants by hand.”

When multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions like Mon­san­to have already suc­ceed­ed in genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fy­ing the polit­i­cal sys­tem, splic­ing in their ex-exec­u­tives and ex-lawyers into posi­tions of great pow­er with­in the gov­ern­ment [see image above], how can folks rely on these Mon­san­to, Dow and Sygen­ta-influ­enced reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies, and the enforce­ment arms with­in their con­trol, to make deci­sions in the inter­est of their health or basic civ­il rights?

Some resort to pulling up, burn­ing and oth­er­wise destroy­ing the plants them­selves. Are they ter­ror­ists or free­dom fight­ers? And if you answer affir­ma­tive­ly to the lat­ter def­i­n­i­tion, will you your­self be defined as sym­pa­thiz­ers to these “eco­nom­ic sabo­teurs,” or ter­ror­ists?