A caravan of peasant leaders from around the world, lead by José Bové, president of the French National
Confederation of Peasants and director of Via Campesina, participated on Friday, Jan. 26, in the destruction of rows of transgenic soy planted in the Monsanto research complex in Não-Me-Toque, approximately three and a half hours from Porto Alegre. The area had been occupied the prior day by 1,300 farmers from various parts of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. "This goes right to our hearts, occupying this place and destroying transgenic soy," the French leader declared during the collective act in which about 5 acres of soy were pulled up. Soon after, Monsanto was symbolically buried in a coffin covered with the American flag.

Bové and his committee arrived at the complex at 8:00 in the morning, accompanied by the national coordinator of the MST (Landless Rural Workers Movement), João Pedro Stédile. As soon as he arrived, the French leader declared as "legitimate" the occupation of the Monsanto research center, given that it was engaged in experiments with transgenic seeds, whose commercialization and cultivation is prohibited throughout Brazil.

Despite this prohibition, reports from European import companies released this week in Belgium asserted that 30% of the soy imported from Rio Grande do Sul indicated the presence of GMOs (genetically modified organisms). In all of the verified cases, if was the variety produced by the U.S.-based Monsanto that was detected.

The action organized by the MST (Landless Rural Workers Movement), by the MMTR (Movement of Rural Working
Women), by the MAB (Movement of the Displaced by Dams), by the MPA (Movement of Small Farmers) had as its
objective the demonstration of rejection of the farmers of the covert entrance of transgenic seeds that, in addition to
posing risks to public health and the environment, make agricultural producers completely dependent on seeds,
herbicides and pesticides produced by multinational conglomerates such as Monsanto. At the end of the action, at noon, the farmers burned an American flag as well seeds that were to be genetically modified and that the activists had used to write "Fora Trangênico" (Out With the Transgenics).

For Bové, as the mobilizations of European farmers were able to block the cultivation of GMOs in Europe and turn
public opinion against these products, the intent of the multinationals is to attempt to impose these seeds on countries in the South. "For us, the North and the South are the same thing. This struggle is not French, it is international. We have to destroy all of the transgenic products."

The coordinator of the MST confirmed the tendency of multinationals to concentrate their attention on the countries of the South, and he denounced the fact that the Brazilian federal government loaned approximately 300 million reais (150 million dollars) to the U.S.-based multinational to install the an herbicide/pesticide factory in Bahia. "This demonstrates that the use of trangenic seeds does not reduce the uses of these poisons but increases them, " he stated.

Stédile added that he is in favor of biotechnology "as long as it is organic and respectful of health and environmental concerns." José Bové suggested that the 1,000 acres of the Monsanto experimental complex be taken by the peasant movements in order to turn it in to an international center of research directed toward organic agriculture instead of one developing GMOs.