GM protest rocks France

August 27, 2001 Posted: 3:46 PM EDT (1946 GMT)

CNN

PARIS, France -- The French government is attempting to
counter high-profile protests against genetically modified
crops. 

A test site for genetically modified maize was destroyed on
Sunday by protestors led by the Peasants Confederation of
radical farming leader Jose Bove. 

The protesters destroyed two cornfields in southeastern
France as part of a long-running battle against GM crops. 

Sunday's protest was the fifth time that French protest
groups have destroyed GM crops since late June. 

Reacting to the destruction, the country's health and
research ministers urged protesters to leave the
experimental crops in place because they were needed for
medical research. 

The protest came as another anti-globalisation group, Attac,
stepped up pressure on the government to adopt a tax on
global foreign exchange transactions to reduce Third World
debt -- a step Finance Minister Laurent Fabius has rejected
as impractical. 

Health Minister Bernard Kouchner said: "We have to have a
discussion, but we can't accept reactions that are against
progress." 

He told Europe 1 radio: "It is not acceptable when someone
destroys a field aimed at a treatment for cystic fibrosis." 

Research Minister Roger-Gerard Schwartzenberg deplored the
destruction of GM crop experiments as a step backwards in
the quest for more information. 

"There are perhaps possible risks for health and the
environment, but this is exactly what these tests are trying
to verify," Schwartzenberg said in a television interview. 

Dealing with the anti-globalisation movement has become a
key issue for Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. 

He needs to rally support among the many strands of the
French left if he is to beat President Jacques Chirac in
elections next year. 

His Greens party coalition partners complicated the task
when their leader, Dominique Voynet, sided with the
protesters. 

"I understand them. (Their actions are) undoubtedly
resulting from the ambiguous attitude of the government,"
said Voynet, who stepped down as environment minister in
July to lead the Greens through presidential and legislative
polls in 2002. 

Her successor at the Environment Ministry, fellow Green Yves
Cochet, last week described the campaigners' actions as
illegal but said they raised a legitimate issue that had to
be debated. 

The campaign to destroy GM crops sprang up earlier this year
when the Agriculture Ministry published a list of 100
districts where genetically engineered plant trials were
being conducted.