FRANCE: Protesters rally at McDonald's site

 13 Aug 2001
 Source: Reuters

 MILLAU, France, Aug 12 (Reuters) - French farmer leader Jose Bove and
2,000 supporters gathered on Sunday outside the McDonald's fast-food hut he
trashed two years ago as a symbol of the wrongs of globalisation.

 The walrus-moustachioed Bove, still fighting a jail sentence for the
act that launched him as a star of the international protest movement, drove by
tractor to the restaurant in the southern town of Millau sucking on his
trademark drooping pipe.

 "This is not an anniversary, unfortunately, because the fight
continues," he told reporters of punitive U.S. tariffs on roquefort cheese and other
luxury food items which sparked the original attack, carried out with nine others.

  Local authorities described the mood of the protesters, who carried
banners insisting "The world is not a product", as relaxed. Debates and live
music were planned in the evening, with some participants expecting the event to
last a few days.

 Its doors closed, the McDonald's hut was guarded by a dozen riot
police.

 The U.S. tariffs, which French producers say threaten their livelihood
by preventing them from selling profitably to the U.S. market, were
imposed after the European Union refused to lift a ban on North American
hormone-treated beef.

 Aside from the pungent blue-veined roquefort made from ewe's milk, foie
gras and truffles are also hit by the levies.

 Bove, whose campaign against "la malbouffe" (lousy food) has tapped
into French concern that its gastronomic traditions could be swept aside by
multinational food giants, also used the event to demand a complete ban
on gene-modified crops in France.

 "From midnight tonight, all open air experiments with GMOs (genetically
modified organisms) must stop," he said, warning that his Confederation Paysanne 
farmers union would destroy such crops if the government did not intervene.

 French food safety agency AFSSA raised concern last month about the
production of GMOs, currently only permitted here for experimental
purposes,  after it found traces of such organisms that had entered
fields of conventional  crops.

 A French appeals court in March ordered Bove to serve three months in
jail for the "dismantling" of the Millau McDonald's in 1999, a ruling he has
said he will appeal to France's highest court. He said the action was in the
public's interest.

 (C) Reuters Limited 2001.