Home | Friday 14th March 2008 | Issue 624

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CARRY ON CAMPESINA

Whilst the spectre of genetically modified foods occasionally rears it’s deformed head here in Europe (see SchNEWS 583), the GM companies are trying to get a bigger share of the food market in the global south, but like in Europe they are getting a kicking by the majority of the population who are opposed to their Frankenstein food.

Last November we recently reported how a Brazilian anti-GM campaigner was murdered at a Syngenta GM crop trial in Paraná, Brazil, after security forces opened fire on the Via Campesina (The International Peasants Movement) camp at the experimental farm (See SchNEWS 610).

Deadly force has not been enough to stop the resistance however, which has been continuing with increasing intensity. Last week in Brasilia, a protest by 400 women from Via Campesina was held in front of the Swiss embassy against Syngenta, (a Swiss company). Via Campesina summed up their position by releasing a statement saying that, “no scientific studies exist that guarantee that genetically modified crops won’t have negative effects on human health and on nature.”

Meanwhile, also last week around 300 rural women residents from the state of Sao Paulo burst into a property owned by Monsanto and destroyed a plant nursery and crops containing genetically modified corn. They were in and out in half an hour and long gone by the time cops arrived on the scene.

There was also an action the previous week when another 900 members of Via Campesina broke into a facility owned by the Swedish-Finnish paper giant Stora Enso and ripped out non-modified eucalyptus saplings they claimed were illegally planted. It’s good to know that wherever they ply their evil trade, there’s no hiding place for the GM corporations.

* See also www.viacampesina.org

* To keep up to date on British GM resistance, see www.mutatoes.org

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