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"The pity is they should have waited 10 days, and it would have been ready to make polenta," Fidenato said, referring to the corn meal that is a dietary mainstay in northern Italy. The leader of the corn bandits, astrophysicist Luca Tornatore, argued there is enough uncertainty surrounding the health and environmental risks posed by GMOs to make them undesirable. Tornatore said his group grew frustrated that prosecutors, who have sequestered the fields, had not destroyed the crops despite a 2001 Italian law that forbids their cultivation. The protesters also would like to destroy the 4 1/2 hectares Fidenato has planted in another town, but "we don't know where it is," Tornatore acknowledged. Fidenato responded that genetically modified corn has been legal in Italy since it was added to the European Union's catalog of authorized crops 12 years ago. And he pointed to a decision by an administrative court in Rome, which ruled that the agriculture ministry cannot decline to authorize the seeds out of caution. The ruling resulted from a three-year court battle waged by Silvano Dalla Libera, a neighboring farmer in the northeastern region of Friuli, where Fidenato's fields are located. The former agriculture minister, Luca Zaia, along with the health and environment ministers, responded to the administrative decision by putting a moratorium on GMOs in March. There was a risk nearby fields could be contaminated, they said. "To stop me, one poor farmer, three ministries mobilized," Dalla Libera said with a hint of pride. Fidenato began farming when he was 12 and now has about 70 acres. He became persuaded of the merits of genetically altered crops during a trip to the United States in the 1990s and helped found Futuragra, a group of farmers fighting for GMOs. By planting the corn, he risks up to three years in jail and a fine of euro50,000. Fidenato said he's not bothered by the threat of prosecution. Futuragra has been in touch with farmers in Spain, which has the highest concentration of genetically modified corn in Europe, and France, where it has been banned, to press the battle. "If they don't understand it is an EU right, that we don't need authorization, then I have farmers in the entire Po River valley, from Piedmont to Veneto, who will plant GMO corn," Fidenato said.
[Associated
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