Giorgio Fidenato has made a habit of carrying a raw ear of yellow corn and taking a hearty bite whenever a camera is in sight.
It’s a provocation. The Italian farmer’s corn is genetically modified, grown surreptitiously in fields in the northeast not far from the Austrian and Slovene borders.
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Word spread about the crop, and on Aug. 9 about 70 anti-GMO activists wearing chemical protection suits trampled nearly an acre of corn to the ground.
Read the whole story here. Makes me want to revive my plan to live-blog eating a papaya genetically engineered to resist the papaya ringspot virus.
At first I thought it was kind of odd that an astrophysicist was leading the charge, but then I realized it’s kinda fitting. Remember a couple of years ago when a botanist tried to sue the LRC into shutting down because he said it would ‘rip a hole in the space-time continuum’ and destroy the world? I wonder what this guy thinks about him. If it’s something like ‘What a moron! He might be good with plants but he shouldn’t interfere in fields he doesn’t understand,’ then the irony just might be what rips a hole in the space-time continuum.
Could you imagine if things were reversed and, for whatever reason, someone associated with GE crops trampled a field of heirloom corn? The rumor mill would combust with storres about how ‘they’ are after your freedom and stuff, but when the shoe’s on the other foot, when someone wants to peacefully plant GE corn, well now it’s a different story.
Gotta say, I like that guy’s attitude, best of luck to his efforts, and I hope he doesn’t run into folks like the arsonists who burnt those GMO grapes in France. Heard about that one? Ugh, some people on a forum I go to every now and again were of the mindset that that was somehow a good thing. Wow. Even if I weren’t already convinced that the opposition to GE crops was rarely rooted in reality, from what I gather, these were rootstocks (no cross-pollination, no seed), government done (no corporations & copyrights), virus resistant (no chemical sales)…and for all the claims of ‘not anti-science, pro-more research’ that’s what it was, simply research, and it was still attacked. Jeepers. I hope this guy doesn’t have to deal with that sort of mentality.
I can’t help but imagine people who work with GMOs going through a lot of blood pressure meds and squishy stress relief balls every time these sorts of stories come up.
I think I’ve had a one of those papayas before. It was from Hawaii anyway, so I would think it might’ve been. It was good.
Comment by Party Cactus — August 20, 2010 @ 1:18 am
All Hawaiian papayas that aren’t labelled as “organic” are transgenic.
Comment by Matt — August 20, 2010 @ 8:26 pm