Newsletter Issue 4 July - August 2001
BIO-Justice or BIO-Devastation

Recent anti-globalisation protests have been met by an increasingly militarised state response which is extremely good at deflecting attention from the issues. Corporate Watch's Lucy Michaels reports back from the BIOjustice protests against the US Biotech industry in San Diego, where the terms of the debate on the future of biotechnology were being set not by the public and free speech, but by a corporate media and corporate security: the police. When twelve hundred people turned up for a completely peaceful, colourful march and rally, the industry rubbed its hands in glee at the low turnout, but on the ground it was obvious why people had stayed at home.

At the annual, and largest ever, gathering of the Biotechnology Industry Organ-isation, BIO 2001, in San Diego this June, things were not expected to run smoothly. For months in advance, the citizens of San Diego had been told to expect up 8000 protesters, untold property damage and ‘violent’ protest. With Gothenburg a week before, TV images of petrol-bomb throwing incoherent anarchists abounded.

Don’t worry, said the mayor, we’ll protect you from these trouble-makers. Sadly he wasn’t referring to the biotechnology industry, whose R&D facilities in San Diego provide an important source of income for Southern California. Accustomed to friendly coppers pointing us towards the GM field, and to the high level of public awareness on biotechnology issues in Britain, I wasn’t prepared for San Diego. The neatly-laid-out city, home to the US navy, was effectively under siege - boarded up shop windows, high-profile police presence, and the FBI in black cars prowling the manicured blocks for ‘activists’.

It seems that the police and the industry worked for months to create this culture of fear. The media filmed police riot drills and made statements warning that anyone on a protest where someone broke the law would be subject to arrest. Leaflets to local shopkeepers screamed of a threat to property and said they should consider closing. The public were persuaded not to lend buildings to the protesters.

Organisers were openly tailed and kept under surveillance. The BIOjustice legal team reported at least 75 people detained for ludicrous minor offences like jaywalking. Myself and a Greenpeace campaigner were pulled over and our passports briefly confiscated for allegedly being members of the Black Bloc. Yet of the three ‘Black Blocs’ marching on the day, two were confronted as police infiltrators and couldn’t even be bothered to deny it.

With a small but eager bunch of activists mostly new to the GM issue, we couldn’t match the PR industry’s media saturation with stories like ‘organic food is bad for you’, ‘why we don’t need labelling of GM foods’, or ‘why little children shouldn’t be denied the right to gene therapy’.

When BIOjustice asked BIO to come to a debate, the executive director of BIO called the organisers saying they didn’t deserve a debate and were wasting his time. ‘You are a bunch of hooligans, I don’t need to call you back’.

From the outside, things look pretty bleak in the US. There is no mandatory labelling of GM foods and very little public awareness of the issue. Nevertheless a recent ABC News poll stated 93% of US citizens favoured labelling. US farmers are struggling to get hold of certified GM-free seeds, and risk law suits if their seeds are shown to contain GM material from cross -pollination. The media and government are under almost complete control by the corporations. Even the Secretary of State for Agriculture is a former director of Calgene - a subsidiary of Monsanto.

Despite this, resistance is flourishing. This was evident from the people, especially farmers, attending the teach-in event, ‘Beyond BIOdevastation’, and the creative and inspirational activism that did take place. On Thursday we formed the voluntary labelling brigade to label GM products in a supermarket. One TV station asked whether this was vandalism! Other activists formed the ‘Biojustice Buccaneers’ to protest from boats in the bay behind the trade fair. Some did ‘invisible theatre’ in malls, holding loud staged conversations with each other and with local retailers.

While the biotech industry has hailed the event as a victory, they are clearly in trouble, especially in agricultural biotech-nology. Their spin struggled to keep the debate on medical issues to avoid the mess agbiotech has got into. They can’t afford to lose the confidence of the venture capital which provides research companies’ start-up costs. Overall, BIO seemed rather lacklustre. Prince Andrew was keynote speaker and the rest seemed to consist of children and minor celebs thanking companies for their health.

BIOJustice’s greatest triumph, however, is that despite San Diego’s militarised economy and police, despite its compliant media and despite the fact that this is suntan-worshipping silicon-breasted Southern California, it forced the ethical debate on GM technology to the fore, and San Diegans came to the teach-ins and marches.

With the debate on globalisation (and street protest generally) so stifled in the USA, and with what seems like a deliberate international policy to up the ante on the burgeoning movement of the disenfranchised and disillusioned, the need to develop new creative tactics, to find new theatres of action and to build alternative and genuinely democratic institutions within our own communities, is even more pressing.


If you can’t beat ‘em, get ‘em to join you....photo by t.c. miranda -
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