French research moves to America because of anti-GM hostility

Limagrain Moves GM Tests To The US Due French Ban

- Sybille de La Hamaide, Reuters via PlanetArk, Feb. 29, 2008

In this report from PARIS, the news is that- Europe's largest seed cooperative Limagrain said on Thursday it had moved its research tests into genetically modified (GM) crops to the United States, put off by France's hostility to GMs and the destruction of test fields.

Chairman Pierre Pagesse said Biogemma, Limagrain's grain and oilseed research unit, would carry around 1,000 tests on GM crops this year in Illinois, in the US corn belt.

Limagrain has a 70 percent stake in the world's fourth-largest seed maker Vilmorin.

"We have decided to transfer our tests to the United States this year," Pagesse told Reuters in an interview at the Paris farm show.

"It is with a heavy heart," he added. "For the first time we will move outside France and even outside the European Union to carry out our tests and this due to the current situation in our country," Pagesse said...

France decided in December to suspend the cultivation of the sole GM crop grown in the European Union, a maize developed by US biotech giant Monsanto, and notified the European Commission earlier this month that it was extending the ban.

Pagesse said the expatriation of the GM tests to the United States, was also prompted by the repetitive attacks carried out by anti-GM activists on Biogemma's test fields.