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Genetix RoundUp ™
The harvest has begun
With summer here and crops ripening in fields, genetics activists have been busy gardening all across Europe. In early June 3 Aventis oil seed rape trials were decontaminated in one weekend by busy Belgian gardeners. Later in the month a Dutch group called the ‘Enraged Hares’ uprooted 2 Monsanto owned sugar beet trials. In early July French activists destroyed a test site of Monsanto owned RoundUp Ready Maize. The French action comes just days after the French government published their first list stating the location of all GM field trials.
Meanwhile closer to home it is now clear that all 11 of Aventis’ winter oil seed rape National Seed List (NSL) trails conducted in England have either failed or been decontaminated by activists. Only 2 Aventis oil seed rape NSL trials in Scotland now remain. NSL trials are used to assess a crop’s stability and distinctiveness (environmental concerns are not addressed) prior to commercialisation. It is thought that the decontamination of such a high proportion of Aventis’s NSL trials may substantially delay the commercialisation of GM herbicide tolerant winter oil seed rape in the UK. . However, it remains unclear whether Aventis will attempt to use data collected from seed listing trials elsewhere in the EU in order to push through commercialisation of this crop.
There are also reports of a number of government run farm scale trials being partially decontaminated around the UK. In Scotland, campaigners cut a large 'X' in the middle of a farm scale trial just before election day. Dorset's only farm scale trial of Aventis summer oil seed rape has also been damaged, while a research and development trial of Aventis winter oil seed rape in Hertfordshire has been 70% destroyed.
In the Dock
Meanwhile, in the court room, recent weeks have seen acquittals of decontamination activists in both Dorset and Essex. In Weymouth, six protesters charged with aggravated trespass after destroying a GM maize crop last summer have had the charges thrown out by magistrates. The six had previously seen the CPS change the charges from criminal damage to aggravated trespass, in order to avoid the protesters demanding a jury trial (the assumption being that jurors are likely to be more sympathetic than magistrates to people acting for the public good). The CPS ploy backfired, however, when the magistrates accepted the protesters’ legal point that, since the law identifies ‘obstruction of a lawful activity’ as a necessary part of aggravated trespass, and no other activity was taking place in the field at the time of the crop-trashing, the charge was unacceptable. This is the first known case of magistrates acquitting GM protesters. When the news was announced, several local people visited another trial site near Weymouth and starting ripping it up. A similar case in Essex saw eleven campaigners arrested for allegedly damaging a crop in Wivenhoe last summer acquitted by magistrates on a technicality – they were charged with damaging a GM crop belonging to Aventis, but the crop actually damaged was a non-GM control crop. The CPS had changed the charges when this was discovered, but never bothered to tell the defendants.
Rallying round
A march and rally at a GM maize trial site at Wivenhoe on Saturday 30th June attracted over 100 people, but apparently spontaneous moves to decontaminate the crop were foiled by an excessive police presence – seven people were arrested for breach of the Section 14 order placed on the site (this is one of the more controversial bits of the Public Order Act, allowing the police to arrest anyone who steps onto land the police have decided they shouldn’t be on – freedom of assembly, anyone?) and for criminal damage, though the damage caused was tiny and police appear to have blatantly made up accusations in at least one case. All seven were released later that night on police bail.
Aventis in secrecy shocker!
Aventis, the biotech giant responsible for current GM trials in the UK, is taking the government to court in an attempt to conceal data on the environmental and health effects of one of its pesticides. Glufosinate ammonium (GA) is used in GM farm-scale trials. It is one of the two herbicides to be sprayed on those GM crops nearest to commercialisation. Friends of the Earth had demanded to see the information after Aventis applied for permission to spray the herbicide in winter (it was previously licenced only for summer use). The government initially refused to hand over the test results, but backed down when threatened with legal action. Aventis is now threatening them from the other side, claiming the results are commercially confidential, and suggesting to FoE that they may have something to hide.
The company has also been under fire for its secrecy after it, SCIMAC (the industry body running GM trials) and the Department of the Environment all refused to speak at a public meeting in Lyng, Norfolk, on the safety of nearby GM trial sites. Yes, this is the same Aventis whose spokesman, Paul Rylott, last October appeared on a BBC2 program saying, ‘We're not trying to impose our views on people - we're, you know, trying to get into reasoned debate and get the results that people say they want so they can understand this...’
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