FBI Chases Anti-GMO Activists While Ignoring Monsanto’s Transgressions

25 June 2013  Some exper­i­men­tal GMO crops were torn out of a field in Ore­gon this month. That means it’s time for the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to freak the fuck out and do its best to clamp down again on eco-activism.

25 June 2013  Some exper­i­men­tal GMO crops were torn out of a field in Ore­gon this month. That means it’s time for the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to freak the fuck out and do its best to clamp down again on eco-activism.

The sug­ar beet plants, which were genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered by Syn­gen­ta to sur­vive appli­ca­tions of the her­bi­cide Roundup, were uproot­ed in the mid­dle of the night from a cou­ple of fields, pre­sum­ably by anti-GMO activists. The destruc­tion of the exper­i­men­tal crops occurred in the same state where a strain of Monsanto’s ille­gal her­bi­cide-resis­tant wheat recent­ly showed up in a farmer’s field, threat­en­ing America’s multi­bil­lion-dol­lar wheat export mar­ket.

 

Guess which crime the FBI is des­per­ate to crack?

That’s right: The sug­ar beet one. The agency announced that it “con­sid­ers this crime to be eco­nom­ic sab­o­tage and a vio­la­tion of fed­er­al law involv­ing dam­age to com­mer­cial agri­cul­tur­al enter­pris­es.” Accord­ing to the FBI, a $10,000 reward is being offered for clues by Ore­go­ni­ans for Food and Shel­ter, a cor­po­rate forestry and agri­cul­ture group that lob­bies for pro-GMO and pro-pes­ti­cide leg­is­la­tion.

The Ore­gon­ian reports that 1,000 genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered sug­ar beet plants were uproot­ed from land leased by Syn­gen­ta on June 8:

“Three nights lat­er, the destruc­tion con­tin­ued on anoth­er prop­er­ty, where anoth­er 5,500 plants were ruined.

“It doesn’t look like a vehi­cle was used. It looks like peo­ple entered the field and destroyed the plants by hand,” said Paul Mine­hart, head of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions in North Amer­i­ca for Syn­gen­ta, a glob­al agri­cul­ture cor­po­ra­tion based in Basel, Switzer­land.

Esti­mates for the dam­age were not spec­i­fied but the finan­cial loss­es are sig­nif­i­cant, accord­ing to FBI spokes­woman Beth Anne Steele.”

Mean­while, Mon­san­to is con­tin­u­ing to push its claim that its genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered wheat turned up on an Ore­gon farm because of an act of sab­o­tage. That claim is draw­ing skep­ti­cism from the expert whose tests first con­firmed that the rogue wheat was devel­oped by Mon­san­to. From a report in The Guardian:

“While Monsanto’s chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer sug­gest­ed eco-activists were to blame, [Ore­gon State Uni­ver­si­ty weed sci­ences pro­fes­sor Car­ol] Mal­lo­ry-Smith said delib­er­ate con­t­a­m­i­na­tion was the least like­ly sce­nario:

‘The sab­o­tage con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry is even hard­er for me to explain or think as log­i­cal because it would mean that some­one had that seed and was hold­ing that seed for 10 or 12 years and hap­pened to put it on the right field to have it found, and iden­ti­fied. I don’t think that makes a lot of sense.’”

We may learn more about the cause of the GMO wheat con­t­a­m­i­na­tion after the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture com­pletes an inves­ti­ga­tion.

But let’s get back to the sug­ar beets case. If you hap­pen to know who uproot­ed those plants, The Ore­gon­ian has a request for you:

“Ring the local offices of the FBI at (541) 773‑2942 dur­ing nor­mal busi­ness hours or call the FBI in Port­land any­time at (503) 224‑4181

Tips may also be emailed to portland@ic.fbi.gov.”

Yeah, right.