The GMO resistance

Genetic modification of food raw materials was first questioned as a health issue; consumer organizations questioned as early as around 1990 whether it posed health risks. With conflicting research results, a certain amount of uncertainty was created, but no more.
Instead, it was farmers’ organizations that could thematize the great risk of GMOs – that the high fixed costs would lead to further monopolization of food production, to marginalization of farmers and to the erosion of their income. Although there were widespread protests in many places, sustainable campaigns could be organized in two countries.
On the one hand, the South Indian Karnataka farmers’ organization KRRS had been formed in the early 1980s, mainly with water resources as a fighting issue. Based on Gandhian self-confidence, it began to destroy experimental genetically modified crops and followed up with the occupation of Monsanto’s offices.

KRRS burns GMO crops.

And on the one hand, there was the French Confédération Paysanne, a breakaway from the French farmers' union FNSEA due to FNSEA’s acceptance of EU rules that primarily favor large-scale agriculture. ”Le Conf” also began to destroy experimental farms – which were dubiously legal due to unclear legislation – and supplemented with small-scale occupations where they offered passers-by authentic home-made food.

In 1999, Conf via Peoples Global Action arranged a group trip for KRRS to France where they jointly destroyed a trial cultivation and had a great impact. This faded, however, when the local Conf group in Larzac on August 12, 1999 symbolically dismantled a McDonalds in response to US punitive tariffs on Larzac’s signal product Roquefort cheese, which in turn was a response to France's refusal to accept hormone-treated meat. Conf’s local department managed to shed light on the conflict between industrial food and authentic locally produced food so that everyone understood it.

Conf "disassembles" a McDonalds. NOTE, only the sign is taken down.

Later that year, Conf, along with KRRS and the US Family Farmers’ Organization National Family Farm Coalition, succeeded in making the issue one of the most important in the protests against the WTO meeting in Seattle.

The question has persisted since then. Acceptance of GMOs in Europe is still slow. And Vía Campesina's member organizations continue to oppose them in the world.

Reading
Chaia Heller: Food, farms & solidarity, Duke University Press 2013.