Bayer HQ Blockaded

www.bayerhazard.com

 http://www.agbiotech.org/

In reply to the previous comment posted on the Bayer Blockade article. I'd urge people to look at  http://efbweb.org/biotec/pages/memcomp.htm to see just who agbiotech and european federation of biotechnology are supported by. Aventis, Glaxo-Smith Kline........ and draw your own conclusions as to who is backing the 'other side' of the debate on GM crops etc

Is this the same AgBioView which, after September 11, carried an opinion piece claiming Greenpeace pulling up GM crops was terrorism as bad as the attack on the WTC? Yes, the pro-biotech camp does have two sides - smarmy greenwash for public consumption (feeding the 3rd world with technology etc.) and mad bigoted rant among themselves.

Dear all,

There is no evidence of any health hazard from GM crops! If there is - please post links to documentation. GM crops are safe for human consumption.

Please! What is the point of magnifying the statistics of an action to make it look bigger or cooler? There were no more than approx THIRTY people on the action and they were locked on for no more than approx THREE hours. This is still pretty good. We're amazing, but let's not randomly exaggerate. It leaves people feeling let down when they discover how things really are. Let's leave that sort of thing to the SWP, eh?

The Bayer action was a good start to a prolonged campaign, but not particularly damaging to Bayer in itself. Not as damaging as any publicity would have been -- which is why the deliberately kept it dark and pretended that no protest was happening.

I agree that it really sucks when people needlessly exagerate. I would like to be able to trust alternative media sources and occasionally you come across stuff you know to be exagerated and it puts other stuff in doubt.

There had all ready been stuff posted on indymedia about the action before the above post went up. In those reports it talked about 30 people so it was really slack to double the figures. I actually feel there were slightly more than thirty. There were about 30 people at the planning meeting the night before and a few more people who had not been at the meeting turned up for the action. As for a six hour blockade - again there were already reports saying the times we arrived and left. I can't imagine that the above poster's maths can be so bad as to get six hours between the hours of 7:40am and 11am! Traffic in the town center is always pretty bad during the rush hour and there was IMHO little evidence that it was significantly worse as a result of our bloackade apart from when the police shut the whole road off for some reason best known by them.

The truth speaks for itself, we don't need to sink to the levels of the corporate media and public relations industry to get our views accross.

Here is another account...

Around forty people were involved in the action which began at 7:40am. A couple of scafold tripods were erected across access roads leading into the staff car parks and a line of six people in arm tubes formed a human chain between lamp posts, thus preventing employees from being able to enter
with their cars.

During the ensuing confussion, some of the protesters managed to enter the buiding. Others managed to lock themselves together within the revolving doors at both the main enterance and the rear doors, making further entry into the building difficult.

Banners were hung saying;
'Bayer get out of GM 'crops','www.bayerhazard.com','Bayer beware' etc.

Throughouut the action, leaflets were handed out to Bayer employees and to passers by in the nearby highstreet. At about 11am the blockade ended as planned and everybody left together. There were no arrests.

There are more photos from the action on  http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=20894 (which would have been the logical place for whoever uploaded the top article here to have put it).

Peter Tinto - your comment that there is no health risk posed by genetically engineered organisms entirely misses the point. True, to my knowledge at least, as yet there has been no (published) evidence that GM technology poses a risk to human health, although genetic engineering at present is not as exact a science as its practitioners would like you to think, and I would not be surprised if evidence of adverse health effects became available in the future. Besides this, the politics behind the biotech industry are truly shocking. GM technology is in no way necessary or beneficial to anybody except the companies involved in it, and it works entirely against the interests of farmers (both in industrialised nations, and to a far larger extent in developing countries), consumers and the environment. Tell me if I'm wrong.

Please, be serious. You do not know the chemical industry, you don't know nothing about Ecology (is different from Ecologism, the first one is the science, the secon the blind fanatism).
Get real information, before write or talk.
I'm sure that many Industries are very irresponsible about our environment, but NOT ALL.
Are you eat?, are you dress?,. are you ALIVE?.....
THINK ABOUT IT, and work for our planet, not against the true.

In order to highlight the fact that Bayer are a target for anyone who cares about people, the planet and animals Redditch Animal rights and Redditch Friends of the Earth have teamed up to demo this huge Bayer site near Bromsgrove.
On Sunday 18th May at 3.30pm protesters will gather outside their offices on Weston Hall Road(off B4091) in Stoke Prior.
Please bring all ya banners, props etc for the press to get some good photos and for a march through the village to make the residents aware of who they have for a neighbour!
Get in touch for more info  redditchanimalrights@yahoo.co.uk Mobile on the day 07952 179351.