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Police spread missinformation for biotech scum

anna | 20.08.2002 15:21 | Ecology | Health | Technology

Police correct earlier 'mistake' regarding whether GM protesters had targetted the correct crop for decontamination.

In a repeat of previous incidents, the police assisted a GM farmer and Aventis in spreading missinformation about the decontamination of a GM trial site. The result of their 'mistake' was that the majority of the mainstream media reported that protesters had targeted the wrong field and while we have now pressured the Dorest Police Press Department to correct their media release, the damage is already done and most of the media reports will go uncorrected. The manufactured controversy over the identity of the field has diverted attention from the real issues.

Don't you just love the media?

Here's some more on the police retraction...

---
ANTI-GM ACTIVISTS TARGETED RIGHT FIELD, BRITISH POLICE SAY
Agence France Presse English, Aug. 19/02 [via Agnet]

BLANDFORD, England - Police were cited as saying Monday that
environmental activists descended on the right field in southwest England when they destroyed genetically modified crops, , correcting their initial version of events.

The story explains that on Sunday, officers said that a group of up to 40 protesters, 14 of whom were arrested, had mistakenly thought that the farm they targeted near Blandford was growing genetically modified oil seed rape.

But on Monday, police issued a correction.

"Dorset police can now confirm that genetically modified trial crops, as well as non-genetically modified crops of oil seed rape, were damaged during the protest," police spokesman Stuart Cooper said.

----- eye witness account

Oooops! Police raid truth on GM trial

I was one of those 14 people arrested on the decontamination action at Hilton in Dorset covered by the Guardian with the headline "GM Protesters 'raid wrong field'".

I have found out that the Dorset Police HQ Press Service stated that we had damaged a crop of oilseed rape that was not part of a trial site. I have asked my solicitor to take appropriate action and I will be complaining to the Police Complaints Authority.

Also it seems to be very bad reporting on the part of Andrew Clennell of The Guardian who has written a very confused article warranting some complaints.

Is this yet another attempt to sideline the main issue? The issue is that this GM trial site contained an unlicenced seed with added risks to human health and people took the responsible action of decontaminating it. Activists started a process of decontamination on the GM farm-scale trial site at Hilton in Dorset. 14 of us were arrested and held in custody for 8 hours while the Directors of Bayer remain free.

Rowan Tilly

anna

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Comments

Hide the following 3 comments

deliberate or just plain incompentent ?

20.08.2002 17:49

Not sure that plod is intelligent enough to seriously sow
disinfo, probably more likely to be plain simple incompetence. As far as i know none of the corporate media articles mention Bayer Crop Science.
Bayer took over aventis CS in june.
The government announced that they have suspended
the trial programme. good moment for everyone in the activist community to get on the case. Sowing season is limited and if they, Bayer, run out of time they lose a year.
Let's hope so ...

digga


Trials will go ahead

31.08.2002 09:34

The police have no business to make statements to the press on subjects that they no nothing about. They could not know either way whether the field contained GM or not - nobody without access to test data could know for certain. However, they could have seen for themselves that the field contained insect traps and markers, and they could have looked up the grid reference. To say that protesters got the wrong field was malicious.

Further more, the field had already been trageted earlier in the summer and the same bollocks about the wrong field came out then before being corrected. It all seems pretty deliberate to me - but I accept that it is not beyond the realms of probability that the police are stupid and incompetent.

FYI

Government has announced that the GM Inspectorates tests on the seeds due to be planted this winter have been completed and they say (without publishing the data) that this batch is not contaminated. The final trials will now be planted without delay. Just a couple of days ago, the Bincombe Dorset trial site was prepared for planting. There was never any real intention to 'suspend' the trials.

Mike


Info about the action

31.08.2002 10:54

Follow this link for information about the action itself...

 http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=38867&group=webcast

Photos of action can be found here...

 http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=38896

j


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