A report by the French authorities, published very discreetly in August, established that 43% of samples of animal feed were contaminated by GMOs at the rate of 0.01 to 1%. An unspecified quantity of feed contains more than 1% of GMOs.
This study relates to feed distributed during 2003 when the moratorium on GMOs was still in force in Europe. How were such high rates of contamination achieved?
Open field trials have taken place in France since the mid 1990s. These culminated in 1998 with the cultivation of 1,500 hectares of GMO crops, thanks to autorisations given by the "Green' minister Dominique Voynet. The contamination of conventional crops by pollen propagation then took place, leaving farmers and consumers with a fait accompli.
At the same time, the European Parliament advanced the concept of "traceability". You don't want GMOs? You'll have them anyway, but you'll have the right to know about it. '.
This neoliberal logic was, probably through naivete, backed by the Greens and ecologist organisations like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, who said that European legislation was 'insufficient' but went 'in the right direction'.
This logic of traceability, has constituted the major argument for the lifting of the moratorium, which took place this summer.
There is no possible choice as long as the contamination of conventional plants by GMOs continues. Faced with this weapon of mass destruction of biodiversity, we have to respond.
We need to create a common front for the banning of their cultivation in open fields.
An activist network which includes farmers and consumers should allow a convergence of the forces fighting the productivist diktats of the European Commission so as to preserve the land and human beings from contamination by GMOs.