GM Round-Up: Ready? Global sabotage the answer

Despite the Euro­pean Food Safe­ty Author­i­ty and of course Mon­san­to declar­ing MON 810 maize to be safe, Ger­many and France in Spring of this year banned the cul­ti­va­tion of this genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crop. It was the only GM crop per­mit­ted in Ger­many. There are very active oppo­si­tion move­ments in both coun­tries — rip­ping up GM crops both at night and by day, occu­py­ing fields were it was due to be plant­ed and oth­er wide-scale protests.

GM apple trees snappedDespite the Euro­pean Food Safe­ty Author­i­ty and of course Mon­san­to declar­ing MON 810 maize to be safe, Ger­many and France in Spring of this year banned the cul­ti­va­tion of this genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crop. It was the only GM crop per­mit­ted in Ger­many. There are very active oppo­si­tion move­ments in both coun­tries — rip­ping up GM crops both at night and by day, occu­py­ing fields were it was due to be plant­ed and oth­er wide-scale protests.

In June in Ger­many, two hun­dred and sev­en­ty apple trees on a tri­al site owned by the Insti­tute for Breed­ing Research on Hor­ti­cul­tur­al and Fruit Crops of the Julius Kühn Insti­tute (JKI) in Dres­den-Pill­nitz were destroyed by unknown intrud­ers. Most of the trees were genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied plants being grown in tubs in a spe­cial safe­ty tent under field-like con­di­tions. It is the first time that pro­test­ers have destroyed plants that were not being grown in the field.

Accord­ing to a press release by the JKI, the tent fab­ric was cut open and all of the trees, which were about sev­en years old, were either snapped by hand or cut with prun­ing shears above the graft. The insti­tute esti­mates the cost of the dam­age to be around EUR 700 000. Around ten years of research work has been destroyed.

Mean­while, in Spain 80,000 hectares of GM maize are grown, most­ly in Zaragoza and Cat­alo­nia. Thou­sands of peo­ple took to the streets this Spring to protest against Spain being the GM dust­bin of Europe.

The UK gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to spout recy­cled (from 10 years ago) indus­try non­sense claims about feed­ing the world, solv­ing cli­mate change and gen­er­al­ly sav­ing human­i­ty. Scot­tish and Welsh politi­cians remain opposed to GM how­ev­er.

In the UK BASF — who have been try­ing to grow GM pota­toes over the last cou­ple of years — did­n’t both­er this year. There have been crit­i­cal reports over their antibi­ot­ic-mark­er GM pota­toes, and the com­pa­ny is prepar­ing itself for a hos­tile takeover bid. More info: deci­sion not to plant this year | takeover threat

How­ev­er, there are claims that a tri­al was grown in secret, and a Welsh GM indus­try-fund­ed farmer con­tin­ues to try to pro­voke through claim­ing to grow GM.

In April in Poland, anti-GM cam­paign­ers from GMO-Free Poland went on hunger strike for 3 weeks, wring­ing a minor con­ces­sion out of the gov­ern­ment.

Protest in India against GM corn led to a large num­ber of arrests, with 35 arrest­ed in oth­er protests there against GM rice.

And on 19th August 2009 in Ice­land, genet­i­cal­ly-mod­i­fied bar­ley, which was being grown for exper­i­men­tal pur­pos­es in Gun­narsholt, south Ice­land, by start-up com­pa­ny ORF Lif­taekni, was dam­aged by a group of activists in the ear­ly hours of Wednes­day. There will be no har­vest this fall. The CEO said: “For a small com­pa­ny like ours, which is strug­gling in the dif­fi­cult inno­va­tion envi­ron­ment, this is a seri­ous mat­ter.” The group of activists, which calls itself Ill­gre­si (Weed), sent an anony­mous email to the media, claim­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for the sab­o­tage.