http://news.excite.com/news/r/010126/08/brazil-protest-monsanto
Brazilian farmers storm Monsanto, uproot plants
Updated 8:52 AM ET January 26, 2001
By Marco SibajaNAO ME TOQUE, Brazil (Reuters) - More than a thousand poor
Brazilian farmers, joined by activists attending an anti-World Economic Forum
summit, stormed a biotech plant owned by U.S. life sciences giant Monsanto,
threatening Friday to camp out indefinitely to protest genetically modified
(GM) food.Some 1,200 workers from settlements of the radical Landless Workers
Movement (MST) in Brazil's southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul invaded
the plant just before midnight Thursday, yanking out GM corn and soybeans
crops at Monsanto's experimental farm."We're staying here indefinitely," said
Solet Campolete, a local MST leader. "We want to make a statement ... these
seeds trick farmers and create dependency on seeds produced by a big
multinational."The MST families took over the research center and warehouses,
hanging hammocks and setting up mattresses and boxes of food. The protesters
scrawled on the walls, "The seed of death!" and "Monsanto is the end of
farmers!"Monsanto said Friday it had requested that local authorities
"restore order" at the unit."Monsanto regrets this incident in which it was a
victim of an aggressive movement that puts the rights to freedom of movement
and to private property at risk, but it affirms its confidence in democracy
and a quick reaction by authorities to restore order," the company said in a
statement.
ANTI-DAVOS FACTION JOINS PROTEST
Militant farmers from around the globe who are in Brazil for the World Social
Forum, a rival meeting to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland,
joined the protesters.Jose Bove, the French farmer and leader of the
Confederation Paysanne who catapulted to fame when he trashed his local
McDonald's, took a four hour bus ride from the state capital of Porto Alegre
to lend his support."Monsanto says transgenics require less pesticides and
chemicals, but that's a lie. Transgenics increase dependence on those
products," he said.Monsanto says its lab-enhanced seeds increase productivity
and reduce the use of agrochemicals among other benefits, but watchdog groups
like Greenpeace have opposed the wide-scale use of biotechnology that they
say has not been developed with sufficient environmental and health impact
studies.They also worry it will force farmers to become dependent on seeds
produced in corporate laboratories rather than on those grown in the
field.Brazil is the only country in the Western Hemisphere that attempts to
ban the commercial planting, importing or sale of GM food, but they do allow
research.Still, it has been an ongoing battle with the government often
trying to reverse its position on GM and some farmers smuggling in GM seeds
from neighboring Argentina. Industry insiders suspect up to a third of Rio
Grande do Sul's soybean crop is GM.The some 10,000 activists united in Porto
Alegre for the "Anti-Davos" forum are expected to condemn GM food along with
a wide range of what they say are neoliberal and capitalist policies that
have deepened the divide between the rich and poor. MST families have led
protests outside the Monsanto plant but it is the first time they invaded the
facility.
