1.GMO Crop Sabotage on the Rise: French citizens destroy trial vineyard
2.Italian farmer pushes genetically modified crops
3."Lies, fantasies and mischief-making"

NOTE: Items 2 and 3 relate to the rise of provocateur "farmers" intent on promoting their pro-GM agendas.
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1.GMO Crop Sabotage on the Rise: French citizens destroy trial vineyard
Rady Ananda
Food Freedom, August 16 2010
http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/gmo-crop-sabotage-on-the-rise-french-citizens-destroy-gmo-vineyard/

Early Sunday morning, French police stood helpless as sixty people, locked inside an open-air field of genetically modified grapevines, uprooted all the plants.  In Spain last month, dozens of people destroyed two GMO fields. On the millennial cusp, Indian farmers burned Bt cotton in their Cremate Monsanto campaign. Ignored by multinational corporations and corrupt public policy makers, citizens act to protect the food supply and the planet.

The French vineyard is the same field attacked last year when the plants were only cut. But the security features installed after that incident kept authorities at bay while the group accomplished its mission yesterday.

Speaking for the group, Olivier Florent told Le Figero that they condemned the use of public funds for open-field testing of GMOs "that we do not want."

Pitching tents in the rain near France's National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA) site in Colmar the night before, the group waited until 5 AM before converging on the site and locking the gates behind them. They uprooted all 70 plants, then submitted to arrest.

This is the second attack on GMO crops to make international news this year. In July dozens of people destroyed two experimental corn crops in Spain. In an anonymous press release, they wrote, "This kind of direct action is the best way to respond to the fait accompli policy through which the Generalitat, the State and the biotech multinationals have been unilaterally imposing genetically modified organisms."

In the 1990s, Indian farmers burnt Bt cotton fields in their Cremate Monsanto campaign. Monsanto did not disclose to farmers that the GM seeds were experimental. "Despite the heavy use of chemical fertiliser, traces of which still can be observed in the field, the Bt plants grew miserably, less than half the size of the traditional cotton plants in the adjacent fields."

After the Haiti earthquake this year, Monsanto offered 475 tons of hybrid corn and terminator vegetable seeds in partnership with USAID. In June, 10,000 Haitian farmers marched in protest of the "poison gift" which produces no viable seeds for future plantings and requires heavy chemical inputs. Haitian farm leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste observed that the biotech plan makes farmers dependent on multinational corporations.

In the US, GMOs were secretly foisted on the public in the mid-1990s, and only now is the US Supreme Court addressing the scourge. In June, the high court upheld partial deregulation of GM alfalfa, which permits limited planting while the USDA prepares an Environmental Impact Statement. Natural and organic alfalfa supply is threatened by the very real potential of GM contamination. This would destroy the organic meat and dairy industry.

Last Friday, a federal court took a tougher position on GM sugar beets. Judge Jeffrey S. White revoked USDA approval of the GM beet, while allowing for its planting this year only.

Also this month, a British farmer exposed that milk and meat from cloned animals had secretly entered the food supply.

Public opposition to GM crops has grown in recent years as more evidence surfaces that DNA-altered crops:

    * Require massive chemical inputs which destroy local biodiversity and poison the water tables;
    * Cross-pollinate with natural and weedy crops;
    * Create superweeds; and
    * Have been shown to cause organ damage, sterility, and diabetes and obesity in mammals.

Meanwhile, President Obama has stacked his Administration with biotech insiders going so far as to appoint Islam Siddiqui as Agriculture Trade Negotiator. Siddiqui is a former pesticide lobbyist and vice president of CropLife America, a biotech and pesticide trade group that lobbies to weaken environmental laws.

The US is pushing hard at the world to accept GM foods. Recently, the American Farm Bureau Federation called for stronger sanctions against the European Union for its GM crop ban.

But as governments and trade agreements circumvent the will of the people, some take matters into their own hands. The rise in GMO crop destruction is a clear indication that the world's people reject chemical and genetic pollution of the food supply and the environment.
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2.Italian farmer pushes genetically modified crops
COLLEEN BARRY
Asociated Press, 18 August 2010
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i94LwR6px9QMDTGKzPFGYJgq_kVAD9HLOBDO0

PORDENONE, Italy ”” Giorgio Fidenato has made a habit of carrying a raw ear of yellow corn and taking a hearty bite whenever a camera is in sight.

It's a provocation. The Italian farmer's corn is genetically modified, grown surreptitiously in fields in the northeast not far from the Austrian and Slovene borders.

"Our biggest goal is to show consumers that it is safe to eat," said the 49-year-old advocate of what's known as genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.

More activist than farmer, Fidenato's cultivation of nearly 5 hectares, or 12 acres, of genetically modified corn is a rogue act aimed at forcing the legalization of genetically engineered crops in Italy. He waxes on about their benefits: They require fewer chemicals and produce higher yields and greater profits.

Fidenato faces formidable opposition in Italy. His opponents are angry, organized and, in some cases, equally prepared to take the law into their own hands. Unlike Americans, the vast majority of Europeans are staunchly against the marketing of genetically modified foods.

Arrayed against Fidenato are agriculture officials, who put a moratorium on genetically modified seeds in March, the country's main farm lobby, consumer groups, environmentalists and anti-globalization protesters.

"Violating the law to get the debate going is a very dangerous precedent," said Roberto Burdese, president of Slow Food Italy, one of 20 organizations that have banded together to keep genetically modified food out of the country.

The European Commission announced in July a proposal that would allow the 27 member states to have the final word on whether to allow cultivation of genetically altered food within their own borders. That would likely lead to more bans because countries would no longer be required to back up their rulings with new scientific data.

The announcement was bad news for Fidenato, though by then his corn was knee-high.

The genetically modified corn, produced by St. Louis-based Monsanto, was the only genetically modified seed authorized for commercial cultivation in Europe until March, when a potato seed sold by the German company BASF was approved. Besides the moratorium in Italy, the seed has been banned in at least six countries, including France, Germany and Austria.

Tired of legal battles, Fidenato planted the corn on April 25, Italy's national Liberation day. He posted a video on YouTube showing him planting six seeds, but he didn't disclose that he had in fact planted two fields. That only came out when anonymous letters containing pieces of the plants reached prosecutors in July, raising opponents' suspicions that there could still be others. He won't say where he got the seeds.

Word spread about the crop, and on Aug. 9 about 70 anti-GMO activists wearing chemical protection suits trampled nearly an acre of corn to the ground.

"The pity is they should have waited 10 days, and it would have been ready to make polenta," Fidenato said, referring to the corn meal that is a dietary mainstay in northern Italy.

The leader of the corn bandits, astrophysicist Luca Tornatore, argued there is enough uncertainty surrounding the health and environmental risks posed by GMOs to make them undesirable.

Tornatore said his group grew frustrated that prosecutors, who have sequestered the fields, had not destroyed the crops despite a 2001 Italian law that forbids their cultivation.

The protesters also would like to destroy the 4 1/2 hectares Fidenato has planted in another town, but "we don't know where it is," Tornatore acknowledged.

Fidenato responded that genetically modified corn has been legal in Italy since it was added to the European Union's catalog of authorized crops 12 years ago. And he pointed to a decision by an administrative court in Rome, which ruled that the agriculture ministry cannot decline to authorize the seeds out of caution.

The ruling resulted from a three-year court battle waged by Silvano Dalla Libera, a neighboring farmer in the northeastern region of Friuli, where Fidenato's fields are located.

The former agriculture minister, Luca Zaia, along with the health and environment ministers, responded to the administrative decision by putting a moratorium on GMOs in March. There was a risk nearby fields could be contaminated, they said.

"To stop me, one poor farmer, three ministries mobilized," Dalla Libera said with a hint of pride.

Fidenato began farming when he was 12 and now has about 70 acres. He became persuaded of the merits of genetically altered crops during a trip to the United States in the 1990s and helped found Futuragra, a group of farmers fighting for GMOs.

By planting the corn, he risks up to three years in jail and a fine of euro50,000.

Fidenato said he's not bothered by the threat of prosecution. Futuragra has been in touch with farmers in Spain, which has the highest concentration of genetically modified corn in Europe, and France, where it has been banned, to press the battle.

"If they don't understand it is an EU right, that we don't need authorization, then I have farmers in the entire Po River valley, from Piedmont to Veneto, who will plant GMO corn," Fidenato said.
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3. "Lies, fantasies and mischief-making"
GMWatch, October 6 2009
http://www.gmwatch.eu/latest-listing/1-news-items/11560-lies-fantasies-and-cynical-mischief-making

NOTE: The story of the Welsh farmer who by growing GM maize defied the unanimous vote of the Welsh Assembly to keep Wales GM-free, triggered headlines around the world. The story even caught the attention of the journal Nature, which ran the headline, "Farmer defies GM 'ban'", while the pro-GM Institute of Biology joyfully declared "Wales no longer GM Free". And The Guardian invited Harrington to explain at some length, "Why I planted genetically modified maize on my Welsh farm".

But once people spoke to Jonathon Harrington's neighbours a different story started to emerge, suggesting Harrington was not really a farmer at all and that it was improbable that he had actually planted the GM maize or distributed it to other farmers, as he claimed.
http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/Jonathon_Harrington

The press release below from GM-free Cymru confirms their view that the Harrington GM maize stunt was, in fact, "lies, fantasies, and cynical mischief-making."
http://www.gmfreecymru.org/news/Press_Notice24Sept2009.htm

It's also emerged that the man who declared in The Guardian that his protest had taken place "without touching the public purse", has cost the taxpayer thousands in investigating his false claims.

EXTRACT: "I can confirm that during the course of the investigation, (we found) no evidence that GM crops were grown, cultivated, circulated to any farms in the Powys area or fed to any stock in the county."
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Confirmation that GM maize crop was NOT grown in Wales
GM Free Cymru press notice [Wales, UK], 5 October 2009 [shortened]
http://www.gmfreecymru.org/

Information obtained by a neighbour under the FOI (Freedom of Information) legislation has revealed that Powys agromomist Jonathan Harrington did NOT grow GM maize on his holding in 2008; did not harvest a GM crop; did not convert it into silage; and did not pass it into the animal food chain.

In January of this year Mr Harrington claimed that he had grown the GM maize as a protest against the Welsh Assembly's tough policy on GM crops, and to show that he could "legally" plant and use GM maize varieties that have been approved for use by the EC. The media used the story without any serious critical analysis, in spite of the fact that Mr Harrington provided no evidence at all to back up his claims. Indeed, as the months passed he elaborated his claims, with further media coverage.

Neighbouring farmers were seriously worried by the claims made by Mr Harrington, as were officials of Powys County Council and the Welsh Assembly Government. A long investigation ensued, with Powys CC [County Council] Trading Standards officers taking the lead. Again, Mr Harrington refused to supply evidence to back up his claims, and eventually he was forced to change his story -- leading officials to the view that this was, from the beginning, an elaborate publicity stunt.

In the Powys CC case analysis, now released under the FOI rules, they state:

" .......after protracted attempts to get answers under caution from J Harrington, we eventually received a response to our questions in which he indicated and admitted that the growing of the GM Maize crops on his premises was not part of his business or any activity connected to that business."

Mr Harrington then said: "..........he had received a quantity of 50 seeds of two varieties of GM maize which he had used to grow crops on his holding for his own interest as a biologist, and that the crops were destroyed on his holding following harvesting. It is impossible to prove or disprove these claims. Samples of seed supplied to the Trading Standards Service by Harrington were analysed by a Public Analyst and found not to be GM modified seed."

In a letter to Ian Panton of GM Free Cymru, Mr Lee Evans of Powys CC said: "I can confirm that during the course of the investigation, (we found) no evidence that GM crops were grown, cultivated, circulated to any farms in the Powys area or fed to any stock in the county."

Powys CC also revealed that the investigation of the false claims by Mr Harrington cost the taxpayer GBP4,200. The cost of parallel investigations (including legal advice) within the Welsh Assembly Government is not known.

Commenting for GM Free Cymru, Dr Brian John said: "We have thought that this whole thing was a scam, right from the beginning. What is so upsetting about it is that Mr Harrington has caused grave concern within his own neighbourhood, misled the media and the people of Wales, and wasted thousands of pounds of taxpayer's money. If he thinks that his little stunt has enhanced the image of the GM industry, he is living in cloud cuckoo land. The industry has used lies and deception for years, and is -- deservedly -- deeply mistrusted by UK consumers."

ENDS