GMOs Are Unconstitutional! Time to ban and destroy them (France)

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GMW: GMOs Are Unconstitutional! Time to ban and destroy them

" GM WATCH " <info

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 11:23:31 GMT

 

 

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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EXCERPTS: ...this is the beginning of the end for the impunity of

France's transgenic industry; it's a subpoena addressed to the French

State;

it's an indictment of its cowardice. The illegitimacy of GMOs was

established before; their illegality is finally recognized because their

destruction is legally qualified as a necessity.

 

....We invoke a state of necessity everywhere GMO plants are cultivated

or tested in the field. From now on, every citizen has the right to

destroy them, and the government has a duty to prohibit them.

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GMOs Are Unconstitutional

By Francine Bavay, Yves Contassot, Renaud De Wreden, Francois Dufour,

Fabienne Glasson, Philippe Matet, Annette Rimbert, and Xavier Timoner

Le Monde, 18 January 2006

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/011906HA.shtml

 

December 9, 2005, is a historic date: it's the political birthday for

the Charter of the Environment which was entered into the Constitution

in February of the same year. GMOs became literally unconstitutional. On

December 9th, in an unprecedented decision, the Orleans criminal court

- followed by the Versailles court on January 13 for other deliberate

reapers - discharged us for having deliberately reaped Monsanto's

transgenic corn crops in 2004. The court recognized the " necessity " of

our

action. This necessity, according to the court, results from the " present

danger of the uncontrolled spread of GMO genes, the dissemination of

which had been authorized, contrary to the constitutional right to a

healthy environment. "

 

In consequence, this is the beginning of the end for the impunity of

France's transgenic industry; it's a subpoena addressed to the French

State; it's an indictment of its cowardice. The illegitimacy of GMOs was

established before; their illegality is finally recognized because their

destruction is legally qualified as a necessity. By virtue of the

Charter of the Environment inscribed in the Constitution, a right to

neutralize GMOs planted in the field has just been affirmed by the French

legal system. This decision finally forces all actors, beginning with the

state, to take an irreversible position.

 

The French authorities have shown themselves over time to be

extraordinarily weak, hypocritical, and inconstant. Successive

governments have

abandoned the GMO question to contradictory winds from Europe,

scientists, public opinion, and, as punishment for this cowardice, the

justice

system!

 

First of all, the European Union, which imposed a moratorium in 1999,

then its lifting in 2004, but also a protective directive France did not

respect; then, scientists whose opinions followed one another with no

similarities, proving daily the extent of uncertainty; finally, the

labor and union movements, since France - one of the leaders in

experimental GMO agriculture as of the end of the 1980s - experienced

no public

debate on the subject until 1996 and that, only thanks to citizen

vigilance.

 

The Orleans decision allows us to make up for lost time and to go still

further. Let's look around us: numerous governments, scalded by great

public health scandals and paying attention to their citizens' opinion,

have taken the lead and demonstrated extreme caution. Germany is a case

in point, with a very protective and deterrent November 2004 law that

invests total responsibility in the case of contamination with the

producers and cultivators of GMO. Also in November 2004, Italy

published a

decree on the coexistence of crops and imposed a moratorium until the

end of 2005. Quite recently, Denmark provided for the constitution of an

obligatory national indemnification fund GMO cultivators must

to, at the rate of 13.4 Euros per hectare [2.47 acres] per year, in

order to compensate for the absence of private insurance for

contaminations. Finally, the Swiss - already endowed with the very

strict 2004

Genlex - have just voted by referendum in favor of a five year

moratorium on

GMO cultivation, repudiating their present government's position.

Austria, which took over the Union presidency and which will organize the

first European conference on GMO, finally deigned to consult its citizens

in 1997 and prohibits transgenic crops.

 

In all the great democratic countries, governments have taken the

measure of the GMO stakes: nothing less than an attempt to privatize the

global food base (soy, rice, corn, wheat) and genetic patrimony via brand

names. Unique in its kind, France promoted GMO in retreat, through a

series of faits accomplis. Now that's all finished. Nature is a whole

that imposes choices. We invoke a state of necessity everywhere GMO

plants

are cultivated or tested in the field. From now on, every citizen has

the right to destroy them, and the government has a duty to prohibit

them. We demand the creation of an indemnification fund for proven

contaminations, a citizen reorientation for research grants,

prohibition of

any new GMO planting and the neutralization of any existing crops, and

finally, organization in the coming months of a national referendum on

the question of GMO.

 

For Gandhi, the function of non-violent action was to make the hidden

violence of institutions, of the " established disorder " visible; in the

same way, we have wanted to make visible the violence done to peasants,

citizens, science, democracy, and to the simple duty to govern. The

French legal system has finally understood that so that we may all grasp

the consequences.

 

Francine Bavay, Yves Contassot, Renaud De Wreden, Francois Dufour,

Fabienne Glasson, Philippe Matet, Annette Rimbert, and Xavier Timoner are

deliberate GMO crop reapers.

 

Translation: French language correspondent leslie.thatcher

 

 

 

 

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