Members of the organization Greenpeace have marked a field of genetically modified corn, in defiance of a French court’s order that the location of such crops be removed from the website of Greenpeace France.
MARMANDE, France, July 27, 2006 – Early this morning a group of Greenpeace activists entered a field of genetically engineered maize, or corn, in southern France and carved a giant “crop circle” with an “X” in the field.
The action, taken to mark the field as a contamination zone, was in response to a ruling by a French court yesterday. The court ordered Greenpeace France to remove from its website maps showing the location of commercial fields of genetically engineered (GE) maize in France.
“As we are now forbidden to publish these maps of GE maize on our webpage, we have gone into the fields and marked it for real,” said Arnaud Apoteker of Greenpeace France.
Although the locations are now available at the greenpeace.org website, the concerns regarding contamination have been confirmed with the release of a European Commission report. The report only hints at what may be the result of contamination of genetic material from GMOs with other crops.
The papers outlined scientific concerns about the long term safety of transgenic foods and crops. Further papers, also released to Friends of the Earth Europe earlier this year, outlined these concerns in more detail, warning that cancer and allergies caused by eating genetically engineered foods cannot be ruled out and recommending that these crops should not be grown until their long-term effects are known.
Scientists are only just beginning to understand what the effects may be. Yet experimentation is ongoing.
In Peru:
Two children have already developed allergies after an experiment with transgenic serum. Fabrizio and Jordano are among 140 children who received a rehydrating substance that contained plant-human genes. Mothers are demanding that the Ministry of Health monitors the state of their children.
The parents were apparently not made aware of the serum’s origins despite the uncertainty of the long term impact.
But, for GMO’s this may be already be a case of too little too late. Scientists are concerned that the genie is already out of the bottle.
In Spain, there is a similar block on publishing locations of modified crops. A Greenpeace report states that genetic material has spread, at least partly because of this policy.
In Spain, the government has so far refused to publish the locations of genetically engineered fields. The consequences of this policy are detailed in an April 2006 Greenpeace report, “Impossible Coexistence.” The report shows that in nearly 20 percent of the investigated cases, neighboring conventional and organic maize fields in Spain are contaminated by genetically engineered organisms, without the knowlege of farmers and consumers. …
While the European Union has a legal system for contol, tracing and labeling genetically engineered crops, the Greenpeace report claims the system does not work. “The control and monitoring of GMOs from laboratory to plate is ineffective, and in many cases non-existent,” the report states. “The system for segregation, traceability and labelling does not work” …
“Genetic engineering is an unnecessary and unwanted technology that contaminates the environment, threatens biodiversity and poses unacceptable risks to health,” says Greenpeace.
The bottom line:
The report concludes that the “co-existence” of genetically modified and non-genetically modified crops is not possible.
More at Greenpeace.
