Police arrested activists on Monday outside an international conference highlighting the benefits of biotechnology as US President George Bush urged a wary European Union (EU) to drop its opposition to GM (genetically modified) crops.
Speaking in Washington as the ministerial level conference got underway on the opposite side of the United States in Sacramento, California — where police had arrested 50 protesters — Bush said it was time European nations put aside biotechnological qualms, saying they hurt Africa’s bid to beat hunger.
Washington, leading 12 other nations, has launched a bid at the World Trade Organisation to have an EU moratorium on the use of GM crops overturned.
The subject of Bush’s speech to the Bio 2003 convention in the US federal capital was also a core theme of the parallel conference in California hosted by US Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman.
The three day Ministerial Conference and Expo on Agricultural Science and Technology lasts through June 25 and has participants from the agriculture sector from 120 countries.
A US Agriculture Department statement said the conference will discuss finding ways to end hunger in the world and to improve the quality of nutrition through the use of biotechnology.
Veneman said it would focus on methods of raising food crops to help developing countries, and on how to end hunger by 2015 — an objective established last year by the World Trade Organisation.
”What we’re talking about is increasing food productivity in areas of the world where people are both hungry and poor,” Veneman
said.
But lobbyists said biotechnology is no antidote for hunger. And as mounted anti-riot police squared off with protesters, police said they arrested three people on Monday on charges of vandalism, gun and sharp instrument possession, downwardly revising an earlier figure of 22.
A total of 47 people had been arrested late on Sunday, police spokesperson Sam Sommers said.
Sommers said around 2 000 people had been present during Monday’s protests. Leda Dederich, a member of the group organising
the protest said that while 2 000 protesters were present on Sunday; the figure had risen to 5 000 on Monday.
Kicking off the conference on Monday, a group dressed as butterflies and giant tomatoes to underscore their fears over the expanding power of GM technology. More protests were expected into the evening.
Dederich said more than 130 groups were involved in the protests, to say ”No” to corporate monopoly of the food system, as 800-million people around the world suffer from chronic hunger.
Those against the use of genetically modified crops and foods say the conference is merely geared to boost income for the major US agro industry.
Activists are also concerned its surreptitious goal is to see US infiltration of other countries through its huge agriculture-related companies and own interests.
”The conference is crafted to maximise the profits of biotech and agribusiness giants like Monsanto, Cargill and ADM,” said Dederich.
”We are here to promote and defend agriculture and to protest against the dangerous practice of GMF (genetically modified food),”
she said.
No European minister was present.
Bush told the Bio 2003 convention in Washington that, ”Acting on unfounded, unscientific fears, many European governments have blocked the import of all new biotech crops.”
”Because of these artificial obstacles many African nations avoid investing in biotechnology, worried that their products will be shut out of important European markets,” he said.
”For the sake of a continent threatened by famine, I urge the European governments to end their opposition to biotechnology,” Bush stressed to warm applause, but the EU hit back saying the accusation was completely unfounded and expressed hope that the ”misunderstanding” would be cleared up at an annual EU-US summit in Washington on Wednesday.
These suggestions made by the US are simply not true,” a spokesperson for the EU’s executive arm, Gerassimos Thomas, said.
”None of our member states has tried to impose our views on African or other less developed countries,” he said, denying the EU ties its aid to Africa to compliance with the ban on genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
”This is probably a misunderstanding and we do hope that the US-EU summit will try to clarify this… for the benefit of all developing countries.”
”We should encourage the spread of safe, effective biotechnology to win the fight against global hunger,” Bush added.
The United States complains that European Union countries including France have halted approvals of new genetically modified crops since late 1998, effectively excluding a growing portion of US farm trade. – Sapa-AFP