GE camaigners target warehouses in Ravenna, Italy
This next stage of the European leg of our GE campaign has seen
activists cordoning off the area around the warehouses and
displaying banners declaring 'Europe says no to GMOs' and 'No to GE
Food'. Our aim is to make Ravenna a GE-Free zone and to end all GE
soya imports in Italy.
One of our Italian activists Paola Lipari describes how this
morning's events unrolled: "We wanted to find either soya beans or
soya meal to analyse to find out what was GE. We formed two teams.
The first went towards the warehouse of 'Docks Cereali' company and
the second toward 'Eurodocks'.
"We entered the facility around 5.45 am with no problems. A
security man asked us what we were doing there and we told him that
we were trying to find soya to take samples to analyse. We added
that we are not meant to interfere with their job. We found huge
mountains of soya meal stocked into the warehouse. Finally we found
soya beans and took samples from it carefully sealing them on
plastic bags. We reached the exit but most of it was taken by the
police, but still, some remained safe and we were able to carry it
outside. In the meanwhile the second sample team also got
samples."
"Ravenna is the main entry point of GE contamination into
Italy," said our Italian campaigner Federica Ferrario. "GE soya is
being grown to feed the vast profits of a few large farmers and a
few global agri-business companies such as Bunge, Cargill and
Dreyfus. These companies plus others control the seeds, the trucks,
the shipping and the processing of this GE soya. They also control
the import market and could within one year supply non-GE for every
import to Ravenna and for all of Italy if they so choose."
Our GE campaigners are yet again challenging these
multi-national companies, who are buying GE soya, to answer our
questions so that consumers in Europe and farmers in Latin America
can choose to go GE free. This is what we want to know:
- Do they only import GE soya or, do they also import non-GE
soya?
- Do they keep the non-GE separate from the GE soya?
- Which food companies buy these GE soya imports and which food
products are they being used to produce?
- Will they label the meat and dairy products from the animals
that eat this GE soya?
- Do they want our protest to continue or do they want to give a
commitment to make Ravenna GE Free, as a first step to making all
imports to Italy GE Free?
Italy currently imports 4.2 million tonnes of soya annually for
food and for animal feed. The port of Ravenna accounts for an
estimated 2 million tonnes of these imports and so is the main
entry point for GE contamination into Italy.
The management of the nearby Bunge/Cereol soya bean processing
facility has told us that they are currently GE-free because they
are importing non-GE soya from Brazil, however they added that they
may re-start GE imports as of October. Bunge/Cereol has two other
soya bean processing facilities in Italy in Ancona and Porta
Maghera which import GE soya meal from Argentina.
Daniela Montalto, our GE campaigner from Argentina in Ravenna
commented: "GE soya covers over 14 million hectares in Argentina.
It is green but it is a desert. Now forest is being logged to clear
the land for GE soya production. For the future health and wealth
of Argentina the GM soya monoculture must be stopped."
Today's activities follow on from another important action
yesterday, in Chioggia, Italy. The Esperanza intercepted the
Panama-registered bulk carrier, 'Keoyang Majesty' carrying 40,000
thousands tonnes GE soya from Argentina and demanded an end to the
massive contamination of the Italian food supply from these GE
imports. Some of our activists are still on the boat.
Our activities in Latin America are also going well, over the
weekend we had a victory in Brazil. Another Argentinean ship
'Global Wind', which we had been tracking for a few weeks, left the
GE-free port of Paranagua. After 19 hours our action came to an end
as our activists prevented non GE soya being loaded onto the GE
contaminated ship.