Protesters target food conference

SACRAMENTO - Chanting "Beat Back the Corporate Attack", thousands of demonstrators protested against genetically modified foods outside an international agriculture conference yesterday as a small army of police looked on.

The crowd, including some people dressed as ears of corn, marched from the steps of California's capitol building to the nearby convention centre, where delegates from more than 100 countries were attending a conference on agricultural science and technology.

The protests remained mostly peaceful. Police made three arrests and confiscated some flammable liquids, pointed sticks and wooden shields.

The downtown area was crowded, with officers patrolling on foot, bicycles and horseback. They said they were taking every effort to prevent a repeat of the protests in Seattle that turned violent four years ago when the World Trade Organisation convened there.

Yesterday about 47 demonstrators were arrested on charges including vandalism, trespassing and assault. One had to be forcibly removed from a tree.

Inside the conference, US Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman kicked off the talks with remarks about the ways technology could improve crop yields and help to ease food shortages in an ever more crowded world.

"Technology alone is not a solution," Veneman said. "It is merely a tool, and without supportive policies and regulations, its benefits will not be fully realised."

But several protesters argued that technology such as bio-engineering was being misrepresented as a panacea to the world's food shortage, with little regard for potential dangers.

"We really don't know what the impact of genetically engineered organisms will be," said a student from a nearby university.

"We now can breed corn that produces its own pharmaceuticals or its own pesticides, and the thought of eating a tortilla that makes me sick concerns me."

Genetically modified seeds can now be altered to repel predatory insects and weed killers, helping to produce higher-yield crops.

Over the past decade, genetic modification practices have been rapidly adopted by American farmers, and today some 75 per cent of soybeans and 34 per cent of the corn produced in the US comes from seeds that have been genetically altered.

Much of yesterday's protest centred on Monsanto, the Missouri-based company which has recently commercialised a bio-engineered wheat. Among the signs the protesters waved were some bearing messages like "Seeds Belong to the People" and even "Monsanto Is Nazi for the Devil".

But some protesters conceded that they did not yet know how dangerous genetically altered foods might be. They said they were mainly concerned by widespread adoption of such foods with little research to support their safety.

- REUTERS