The Green Reapers vs. Monsanto
UK – On July 4, five women dressed in protective suits “openly and accountably” pulled up 200 genetically engineered sugar beets from a Monsanto “test field” at Model Farm, Oxfordshire.

Before they were arrested, the five members of the so-called GenetiX Snowball campaign – Melanie Jarman, Rowan Tilly, Kathryn Tulip, Zoe Elford and Jo Hamilton – took care to seal the plants in clearly labeled bags “for disposal by the relevant authorities.”

Two weeks later, the giant biotech company brought charges against the women, seeking to recover costs for “unlimited damages.”

“This is a David and Goliath situation,” declared Jarman. :Monsanto’s bullying tactics are being used to distract attention from their flawed science.”

The idea behind the GenetiX Snowball is that each protester is to encourage two new activists to visit one of Monsanto’s 70 UK test fields and “pull up a maximum of 100 plants.” Snowball actions are scheduled for the first and third weekends of every month.

On July 18, a band of seven women and men took the Snowball campaign to a test-field in Banbury where, to the delight of the activists, the farmer informed them that his crops were perfectly natural. He said that Monsanto officials had not told him that the canola seed he had contracted to grow was genetically engineered. When he found out, he withdrew from the program.

The women have claimed that the July 4 action is protected by a 1967 Criminal Law Act that allows “reasonable force” to be used to prevent a “crime” – the crime in this case being the pollution of wild plant communities with a “spill” of laboratory-engineered mutant organisms.

In 1997, more than 12 million hectares were planted with gene-spliced seeds – a ten-fold increase from 1996. Norway has banned the import of suspect US soybeans and Austria and Luxembourg have enacted bans against genetically engineered (GE) foods. In Britain, Prince Charles has proclaimed that he will never purchase or consume any GE foods.

“A bunch of people are trying to get rich by telling us that nature isn’t good enough and that we will have to take genes out of a fish and put them in a strawberry,” a Swiss farmer named Kaspar Gunthardt told the New York Times. “They are changing the basic rules of life and they want to try it all out on us.”

“The shadow of the Holocaust is dense and incredibly powerful still,” University of Pennsylvania ethicist Arthur Caplan told the Times. “To [Europeans], the potential to abuse genetics is not theory. It is a historical fact.”

“There has been no consultation with the British people as to their desire for GE food or crops,” notes the Genetic Engineering network [PO Box 9656, London N4 4JY, www.dmac.co.uk/gen]. After a nationwide poll found that 77 percent of the public opposed GE produce, Monsanto spent millions on a massive UK ad campaign to promote bio-engineered plants and food.

GenetiX Snowball has called for a five-year moratorium on the release of GE crops into the environment. According to Snowballer Peter Pritchard, “The use of the British people as guinea-pigs and their countryside as a laboratory for the release of genetically modified organisms is an act of sheer recklessness.”

Free Speech vs. Monsanto
US – In March, as the Center for Ethics and Toxics [CETOS, PO Box 673, Gualala, CA (707) 884-1700, CA 95445, www.cetos.org] was preparing to publish a book called Against the Grain – a “detailed, first-hand account of the perils of the new genetic technologies in agriculture” – their publisher received a threatening letter from Monsanto’s lawyers who complained that the book’s comments about Roundup, a major Monsanto herbicide, were defamatory and potentially libelous. To CETOS’ dismay, their publisher “stopped the presses and folded his tent.”

“Without publishing insurance, we are vulnerable to a lawsuit, which we can ill afford to defend,” Marc Lappé. “But if we were to bow to Monsanto’s bullying tactics, our opportunity to express our views would disappear along with our book.”

On April 27, CETOS fired off a letter to Monsanto CEO Robert Shapiro chastizing him for “censoring a book which no one at Monsanto ever read or even asked to read.”

The good news is that Against the Grain will appear this fall, published by the aptly named Common Courage Press [Monroe, Maine, (800) 497-3207].

New Zealand vs. Monsanto
NEW ZEALAND – In 1997, Monsanto assured the New Zealand public that the introduction of genetically engineered crops like its Roundup™ Ready soybean would help reduce the use of chemical herbicides. But earlier this year, Monsanto applied to the New Zealand Food Authority to increase permitted levels of Roundup residue in soybeans 200-fold.

“Soybeans now contain dramatically elevated residues of the herbicide,” claims Guy Hatchard of the New Zealand Natural Law Party. “Soybeans are used in up to 60 percent of processed foods such as baby foods, chocolate, bread, pasta, sauces [and] ice cream.”

Roundup resistant soybeans have been genetically engineered to contain genetic fragments of soil bacteria and cauliflower mosaic virus, a fact that concerns scientists like Joseph Cummings, Professor Emeritus of Genetics at the University of Western Ontario, who has warned that “Probably the greatest threat from genetically altered crops is the insertion of modified virus and insect virus genes into crops. It has been shown in the laboratory that genetic recombination will create highly virulent new viruses from such constructions.” The cauliflower mosaic virus is a potentially dangerous gene, Cummings added. “It is a pararetrovirus, meaning that it multiplies by making DNA from RNA messages. It is very similar to the Hepatitis B virus and related to HIV. Modified viruses could cause famine by destroying crops or cause human and animal diseases of tremendous power.”

Roundup Resistance Backfires
US – Researchers at Ohio State University and the Risoe National Laboratory in Denmark have discovered that genetically engineered herbicide-resistant oilseed rape plants (Brassica napus) can easily pass their resistance to a closely related weed (Brassica rapa).

In a presentation at the August 6 meeting of the Ecological Society of America, Allison Snow, associate professor of plant biology at Ohio State, reported finding that herbicide resistance was communicated to half of the wild weeds. “By the third generation,” Snow stated, “the weeds that carried the gene for herbicide resistance looked exactly like normal weeds.”

Because cultivated crops are typically less robust that wild plants, transferring increased resistance to closely related weeds will make the weeds more competitive. “If farmers spray their crops with the same herbicide every year,” Snow observed, “the only weeds to survive will be the ones with the transgenes” and the surviving weeds will “spread even faster.” In the process, Snow added, the weeds could develop a resistance to several different herbicides.

What makes it worse is that Monsanto’s genetic engineers altered the genes in the nucleus of the canola seed cells, meaning that the transgenic DNA is carried in every piece of pollen blown by the wind or collected by pollinators. Had the scientists altered the genes in the plant cell’s cytoplasm, the DNA could only be transmitted through the seeds. Studies have shown that the pollen from oilseed rape can travel as far as a mile in all directions.

Monsanto-Spiked Story Is on the Web
US – In late 1997, veteran investigative reporters Jane Akre and Steve Wilson prepared a four-part report on the risks of bovine growth hormone for WTVT television in Tampa, Florida. The show , “The Mystery in Your Milk,” never aired.

The reporters were informed that Monsanto, the manufacturer of Posilac, a synthetic bovine growth hormone, had objected to the series. The reporters were ordered to make substantial changes to their script so that it could be submitted to Monsanto for approval.

The reporters made the required changes but, when they refused to support the broadcast of the edited version, they were fired. The reporters claim that the Monsanto-approved version would have presented viewers with “a slanted, biased and distorted view of this important health issue.”

Akre and Wilson are now suing WTVT. In September, they subpoenaed WTVT personnel after the station canceled an interview with Mary Nash Stoddard, a critic of artificial sweeteners (like Monsanto’s NutraSweet) that contain aspartame.

Stoddard claims that a WTVT official told her the interview was pulled after a meeting with the station’s attorneys. WTVT denies this and claimed the show was canceled because the station was unable to find anyone to “balance” the show by arguing that NutraSweet was harmless.

This attempt at censoring investigative reporting failed. Akre and Wilson’s “unapproved” version of “The Mystery in Your Milk” is now available worldwide on the Internet [www.foxBGHsuit.com]. Transcripts of the reporters’ program and the Monsanto-approved version also are available at the same site.