Reuters | November 25, 1999 | By Christopher Lyddon
LONDON - U.S. life sciences company Monsanto Co on Thursday won a permanent court injunction preventing a British environmental group from destroying trial sites of genetically modified (GM) crops, a company spokesman said.
Attacks on GM crops by the group, GenetiX Snowball, have been one of the more dramatic aspects of opposition to biotechnology from UK environmental groups.
The injunction would stop the group damaging and destroying Monsanto's property, the spokesman said.
"We're pleased at today's ruling," he added. "Acts of deliberate vandalism achieve nothing and shouldn't be condoned. By pulling up GM crops protestors are depriving us all of the answers which companies like Monsanto are being asked to provide."
CALL FOR DIALOGUE
"Instead of taking the law into their own hands we urge all these groups to express their concerns in a dialogue," the spokesman said, renewing a call made made by the company in October.
But GenetiX Snowball campaigner Jo Hamilton told Reuters, "They're not prepared to have a full and frank discussion."
Monsanto had already won a temporary injunction, but had to go back to the court for a permanent ban and to fight the campaigners' contention that the rights and wrongs of genetic modification should be discussed before the ban could be imposed, the spokesman explained.
"Monsanto said it simply wanted legal protection to plant crops and go about its lawful business," he said.
GenetiX Snowball members have taken direct action against test sites belonging to Monsanto and other companies working in biotechnology, destroying crops in highly publicised protests. In June the group destroyed a trial plot of genetically modified (GM) sugar beet at an agricultural show in eastern England.
Merritt said that site demonstrated the environmental benefits of using Monsanto Co's Roundup Ready herbicide, which he claimed encouraged wildlife by allowing weeds to grow longer and provide a source of food.
"We wanted to show farmers that if they planted genetically modified plants they will be ripped up," Martin Shaw, campaigner for Manchester-based environmental group GenetiX Snowball, told Reuters at the time.
Other plots at the show were also attacked, including a non-GM rapeseed demonstration site set up by Switzerland's Novartis AG.
GM FOOD CONTROVERSY RAGES
GM food has unleashed a storm of controversy in Britain, with supermarkets moving to take GM ingredients out of the products on their shelves. Marks and Spencer has even started to guarantee that some of its meat and eggs come from animals that have not been fed GM feed.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved.
