BASF UK Headquarters Shut Down by Anti-GM Protest

When GM crop trials started in the UK in 1998, no one could have predicted the public opposition to them. Within just 5 years, all GM companies including Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer had retreated from Britain, numerous field trials had been destroyed and a moratorium against GM crop growing had been imposed.
Ten years later, Britain is still free from any commercial growing of GM crops. This opposition has also sparked massive resistance elsewhere in Europe. Occasionally test trials, as carried out by BASF, are given permission but are always destroyed by anti-GM activists.

This morning 30 protesters from Earth First! have shut down the BASF UK headquarters at Cheadle Hulme near Manchester, to highlight the company’s role in pushing GM onto our plates. BASF is planning to run the UK’s only trial of GM crops this year, a trial of blight resistant potatoes.

The protesters arrived early in the morning at the flagship offices and have since been blockading the gate by sitting in front of it and locking on using d-locks and other equipment. They are successfully preventing any staff from entering and are demanding the company pull out of GM immediately.

Mary Sunderland from Earth First! Said: “GM has no part to play in our future: it’s a dangerous, unwanted and unproven technology geared towards maximising profits for multinational corporations such as BASF. It is not the answer to food shortages, hunger or climate change. The real solution is to change now to a sustainable farming system and to distribute resources fairly around the world.”

Full article includes footnotes…...

Posted by NatterJack
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