Peasant farmers' organisation responds to GM rice crop trashing in Italy

On 21 June a hugely controversial field trial of GM CRISPR gene-edited rice in Pavia, Italy, was destroyed by unknown activists. The researchers who developed the GM rice issued a press release about the incident, calling the activists “ecoterrorists”, and complaining of “violence” (there was none), “obscurantism”, and “anti-scientific impulses”. Lobbyists for the big seed producers echoed their complaints, labelling the activists “barbarians”.

The Italian Rural Association (ARI), part of the peasant farmers' organisation Via Campesina, opposed the planting of the GM rice trial but also condemned the crop trashing action. Speaking to the news service ENDS, Antonio Onorati, board member of the ARI, said the action will harm the organisation’s goal of ensuring that Italy remains free of GMOs.

“This type of action... criminalises everything we have done in the last 25 years,” Onorati said. “They will repeat the mantra that barbarians are fighting against science [and] innovation,” he added, while noting that cutting the test short will also avoid a negative outcome for proponents of the technology. “We have visited the field trial, we have photos and we were preparing an opposition to the appropriate authorities because we... found [violations of] the rules [for] field tests,” Onorati said, while explaining that the fence surrounding the test site were among the identified shortcomings. “There was no capacity to block animals.”

In a press release, the ARI pointed to other violations, including that the distance from the nearest non-experimental rice crop is 0 metres and not 50 metres, as required, and that signs to indicate cultivation were placed in such a way as to be illegible from the public road.

The ARI said the experiment was in violation of the rules required to test GMOs, because to date the products of“new genomic techniques” (NGTs or “new GM techniques”), in the EU, still fall under the provisions relating to GMOs, since no new regulation has been approved concerning NGT products.

The ARI also said they are convinced that the experiment would have failed due to the scientifically documented limitations and problems of the technology.

Violation of democratic principles

The ARI said that the fact that the trial went ahead at all was a violation of democratic principles, marking a betrayal of "24 years of strict application of the scientific precautionary principle, “risking the world leadership of a large GMO-free agricultural country, which is spending so much to support the quality image of our agri-food sector, both abroad and in Italy”.

The group criticised the lack of public discussion and information about the trial and the fact that there was“no serious assessment of the risks to our agricultural system or the potential damage to the image and economy of the Italian quality farming sector”.

Instead, ARI said, information about the trial of GMO rice, “an experiment allowed only by a very recent government DDL” – a preliminary draft law that still has to go through various approval steps before becoming an effective law or not – was circulated only “among a few experts and interested parties”. The only public outreach to speak of was done by the ARI and other groups opposed to the trial. In its denunciation of the trial, the ARI cited “the lack of usefulness of GMOs, old or new generation for the improvement of agricultural practices. The effort to improve agricultural practices requires much more research and experimentation and dialogue between scientists and farmers on the real needs of our agricultural systems.”

The ARI said, “Now the experimental field has been destroyed and now that it is no longer there, newspapers are rushing to regret it and to defend the freedom of scientific research. They even raise the question of eco-terrorism and speak of unacceptable violence against private property.”

ARI responded to this accusation: “We would like to draw attention to the silent abuse that took place earlier: by imposing with tricks and quibbles a GMO cultivation in the open field, without adequate security and without the Italian population, which for decades has been opposed to GMOs, being adequately informed. Let us remember once again that scientific research is free, just as criticism of the methods and results of scientific research must be free, but subject to the precautionary principle, [which requires that] that experiments must be carried out safely.”

The ARI said that public research should be “oriented to the needs of those who grow and produce food and not conditioned by the interests of an extremely small number of seed companies”.

The group added, “The fundamental laws of our state protect private property, but... it is always the maxim that the freedom of one ends where the freedom of the other begins. The public good is a priority and we would like to finally make possible a public debate on the desirability of the irreversible introduction into open fields of GMOs for experimentation and cultivation in Italy.”


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