From the Bioengineering Action Network
The direct action campaign against genetic engineering and corporate agriculture in Minnesota is underway. Following up on the attack on Novartis/Northrup-King’s Seed research facility on September 1, “Bolt Weevils” trampled 50 rows of research corn adjacent to Pioneer Hi-Bred’s seed research facility in Mankato, Minnesota (Hwy. 22) on Sunday, Sept 12. Company vehicles parked at the facility were also damaged, and “free the seed” and “stop agribusiness” were spray-painted on a shed at the site. The Pioneer sign in front of the facility was appropriately amended to read “Pioneering Farmageddon”.
Pioneer Hi-Bred is the largest seed company in the world and was acquired by Dupont Chemical Co. earlier this year for $9.4 billion. As farmers in the US, France, India and elsewhere struggle to maintain a place in the expanding global economy, corporate mergers and acquisitions increase, giving more control over the world’s food systems to a handful of huge seed-chemical-pharmaceutical conglomerates. The technology of genetic engineering has been developed and marketed to the world by these companies with no regard for the social, ecological or economic consequences of releasing millions of acres of mutated plants into the environment, or the consolidation of seed ownership that has resulted from such a profit-driven science.
Our strike against pioneer is a call to the Weevils and Borers of the world to join the growing resistance to the quickly approaching “Farmageddon”. Crops, research facilities and corporate offices are all sources of this technological threat and should be targeted. Genetic modification of plants is a dangerous experiment on nature and people, and should be stopped.