Crop
circle shows location of alien maize
27 July 2006 - Marmande, France
— If you fly over the south of France you might
be tempted to believe that aliens have landed
with a huge crop circle appearing in a field of
maize. But the aliens aren't from a distant galaxy;
it is GE maize from the laboratory of Monsanto
-- that the French government says you have no
right to know about.
A French court has ordered Greenpeace
France to remove a webpage featuring a Google
Map showing the location of commercial GE maize
fields in France -- despite an EU law which says
the government should make the information available
to the public.
So today we have responded by
carving a giant 'X' crop circle into one of the
GE maize fields in question, marking the spot
of the GE maize field that is now censored from
Greenpeace Frances' webpage.
View the google map revealing the
location of the French GE maize fields"As
we are now forbidden to publish these maps of
GE maize on our webpage, we have gone into the
fields and marked the field for real," said
Arnaud Apoteker, of Greenpeace France.
The EU law says that member
states are obliged to maintain public registers
in order to inform their citizens about the locations
of GE fields. But the French Government is dragging
its heels in making the EU's directive into national
law, depriving its citizens of vital information
to protect against the risk of GE contamination
of conventional and organic food.
If you are German, you can find
out the locations of GE crops easily by looking
on government websites, if you are French however,
you are kept in the dark.
"By publishing secret locations
of fields of GE maize, Greenpeace is defending
the right to know and say 'no' to the environmental
and health risks associated with GE Organisms,"
said Geert Ritsema of Greenpeace International.
Yann Arthus Bertrand, photographer
and author of "Earth From Above," took
this image of the crop circle marking a GE Maize
field in France.
France is not the only country where the growing
of GE organisms is shrouded in secrecy. The Spanish
government has so far refused to publish the locations
of GE fields. The dramatic consequences of this
policy became clear in April of this year when
Enric Navarro, an organic farmer, burned his crop
of maize which had become contaminated with GE
rather than sell the contaminated maize to his
customers.
Our recent report 'Impossible
Coexistence' showed that in nearly 20 percent
of the investigated cases, neighbouring conventional
and organic maize fields in Spain are contaminated
by GE organisms, without farmers and consumers
even knowing about it.
