Brazil: Clashes At Monsanto Fields Continue

Posted by Matt Hopkins|18 March 2008

In another conflict with the Via Campesina rural farm workers group, a Monsanto Co. experimental farm was invaded by 300 of the group’s members, who destroyed a greenhouse and a corn field, according to a CNN article.

Monsanto denounced the invasion and vandalism as “illegal acts,” saying in a statement that differences in opinion over genetically modified crops “should be expressed through legal means and freedom of expression, not by attacks against people and individuals.”

The company did not immediately disclose the cost of the vandalism, the article states.

The situation occurred just four days after hundreds of members of Via Campesina invaded a corporate tree farm owned by Swedish-Finnish paper maker Stora Enso to protest the planting of trees harvested to make pulp. In that case, police fired rubber bullets to oust the demonstrators, which triggered a series of protests in southern Brazil that they had employed excessive force.