Paris, France
July 28, 2006
USDA/FAS GAIN report FR 6040
Judicial Decisions Favorable to
Biotech Cultivation
Report Highlights
Two recent judicial
decisions have been supportive of biotech cultivation in
France. The first overturned a lower court ruling
exonerating test plot destroyers. The second required
Greenpeace to remove from its website names and locations of
biotech corn growers. Both decisions will help provide a
more rational environment for biotech cultivation in France.
Nonetheless, the group of anti-biotech activists, "Faucheurs
Volontaires" (Voluntary Cutters), continue to threaten the
biotech industry and claim they plan to attack commercial
biotech crops.
On June 22nd, the Orleans Court of
Appeals upheld the original conviction of 49 people found guilty
of destroying biotech plots belonging to Monsanto. This decision
overturned a lower court ruling last December (see FR5088)
releasing the defendants from liability. The Appeals Court
reinstated a two-month jail sentence for one defendant and the
others received suspended jail sentences and a 1,000 euro fine.
The Court will continue to investigate
Monsanto’s claim for 390,000 euros in damages.
Monsanto welcomed the Court’s
decision stating that it “implements the law, protecting
farmers’ property as well as authorized and monitored
experimentation.” The French planting seed organizations
commented that the Court’s decision underlined the legitimacy of
the “right to conduct research.”
The defendants, part of a group
called Faucheurs Volontaires (Voluntary Cutters), plan to appeal
the decision and to continue to fight biotech development in
France through acts of physical destruction.
For example, on April 13th, fifty
people from Faucheurs Volontaires and Greenpeace stormed a
Monsanto site in southwestern France (Aude area), demonstrated
against GMO’s and hung a banner stating “from the field to the
plate, no GMO.” Demonstrators were arrested at the site.
In June, another group of
Faucheurs Volontaires, associated with the activist farmers’
union, Confederation Paysanne, sent approximately forty
anti-biotech activists to sow organic corn seeds in a GM test
field in southern Paris (Loiret area). The group claimed
responsibility for “sowing life” in contrast to their position
that biotech companies “sow death.”
In July, Monsanto announced that
three of its test plots were damaged and Limagrain, the leading
French seed company and its genetics subsidiary, Biogemma, also
announced it had had test plots destroyed by a group from
“Voluntary Cutters.” Also in July, the “Voluntary Cutters”
announced they would expand their destruction from experimental
test plots to commercial production fields for the first time
this summer.
On July 26, Greenpeace was
judicially required to remove from its website a map of France
with the locations of fields of biotech corn, as well as the
names of biotech corn growers, because of the privacy
infringement. The farmers whose names were indicated on
Greenpeace website had sued Greenpeace, with the help of the
French Corn Growers Association (AGPM). In reaction, Greenpeace
activists destroyed some biotech corn in one of these fields,
marking a large cross which was photographed from an helicopter
by a nationally-known photographer.
Biotech Farmers Support Adoption
of Biotech Crops
In a more positive step for the
advancement of biotech development in France, at the annual
French corn producers meeting in June, a farmer publicly
discussed his justific ations for planting Bt corn. He listed
the advantages of reduced pesticide use, higher production of
high quality corn not weakened by European corn borer attacks,
and the benefits of staggering corn harvests.
And further, Cultivar magazine, a
French technical publication, published an interview in its July
issue with a farmer growing biotech corn for commercial sale in
which he described the different management steps he took from
planting, to coexistence with non-biotech corn, through
harvesting.
Source:
http://www.fas.usda.gov/gainfiles/200607/146208485.pdf
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