GREENPEACE CHALLENGES CHEMICAL GIANT ON GENE BEANS

BRUSSELS, 6 March 1997

The GE action against Monsanto started at around 10.15 on Thursday morning. The action team built a 12 metre long concrete wall and inserted giant syringes with the letter "X" on them, vertically into the concrete.

Another wall built of stone and covered in "X"s blocked the main door to the building dominating the view of diners in the company restaurant. Finally a huge banner saying "STOP GENETIC FOOD EXPERIMENTS" was hung on the building.

All the activists pinned their respective country flags on their back under the Greenpeace logo, to emphasize international opposition to GE Soya. Many countries were represented in the action including: Italy, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, France, UK , Nederland, Finland, Denmark, Ireland, Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Switzerland, Australia, New-Zealand and the US.

The police intervened to break up the protest. There were no arrests and at around 1 pm the activists left Monsanto's HQ, leaving behind the 2 metre stone wall covered in "X"s.

Greenpeace is challenging the legality of the patent granted by the European Patent Office to Monsanto's "Roundup Ready Soya Beans", which have been made resistant to the company's weed killer Roundup. Greenpeace contends that the European Patent Office is breaching its own rules by granting a patent for a plant variety.