Two acres of genetically improved maize were hacked down in Britain earlier this year, and the two scythe-wielding anti-biotech extremists charged with the destruction “wanted people to know what they were doing,” their prosecutor said this week.
What they were doing was razing a field of experimental pesticide-resistant crops — the latest incident in a spate of attacks on crop fields. As Consumer Freedom said in our USA Today op-ed earlier this month, research into such disease-resistant crops was destroyed by U.S. environmental radicals in 1999, causing about $1 million in damages.
Again, we’ll let Florence Wambugu have the last word: “I say to the protesters: Be careful what you attack because you might be harming that which you profess to care about. As researchers, we are taught to ask many questions. I say to the protesters, ask many questions. But let the science and the data provide the answers. The farmers and hungry people of Africa need this technology.”
