Green Activists Board Ship in Protest
The St Petersburg Times, November 14 2006
http://www.times.spb.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=19478

Three activists from the international environmental organization Greenpeace on Monday chained themselves to a cargo ship carrying more than 5,000 tons of genetically modified soya en route from Amsterdam to St. Petersburg. Greenpeace has been campaigning in the past several years for a complete ban on production of GM soya.

The three activists, who got on board of "Rusich-1" on Sunday to take samples of soya — tests have already revealed the soya is GM — were detained by the police.

Greenpeace's boat "Arctic Sunrise" caught up with "Rusich-1" on Sunday in the Baltic Sea, about 200 miles away from St. Petersburg

Exported to Europe from the U.S., Brazil and Argentina as animal feed, the GM soya is grown on deforested Amazon rainforest area, Greenpeace says.

"Russia does not produce genetically modified soya, so whatever GM soya there is in the country, is all imported," said Natalya Olefirenko, head of Greenpeace's Gene Program in Russia. "There is little control over the import of GM products and we see a lack of necessary expertise. The only solution — until reliable independent research is done to establish the risks and damages of GM soya — is to suspend all imports of these products to Russia."

Russian legislation does not require any products made with GM ingredients to be marked with an appropriate label.

According to Greenpeace, 77 percent of the imported GM soya arrives to Russia by sea via the Amsterdam-St. Petersburg route.

St. Petersburg's strategic location as a sea port has recently made the city an object of harsh criticism by environmentalists who cite the transport of cargo including radioactive nuclear waste through the city as a danger to public health.

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