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Biodiversity Versus Biotech

By ALEXANDER REID ROSS

There are many different campaigns to preserve biodiversity here on Earth,and they all seemed to come together when two spunky Florida Atlantic

University alumnus decided to climb a tree and fight for 700 acres of

endangered Florida forest. While the activists remain perched in their tree,

protecting a hand-made, 12x8 banner reading Protect This Forest!, the

Scripps Research Institute undergoes the final stages in the process to gainpermission to slash and burn some of the purest Florida pinelands in South

Florida.

Called the Briger Forest, this rare pine flatwoods ecosystem straddles the

I-95 amidst the gaping sprawl of Miami. In spite of its precarious situation, it

is one of the last habitats of endangered hand fern and gopher tortoise left

in the USA, and the FAU graduates, who are also members of the radical

environmental group, Everglades Earth First!, intend to keep it that way.

Since their campaign got off its feet (and into the trees), the Briger Forest

has come to represent open space, a side of Florida relatively unscathed by

development, versus the selling off of nature, piece by piece, to companies

that wish to control our way of life, our land and our species.

The fight against Scripps has a history down in the muggy, mosquito infested

land of Southern Florida. Three years ago, Scripps tried to clear out orange

grove land to open up a lab in 19,191-acre Mecca Farms, West Palm Beach.With their sights set on a biotech city consisting of 11,000 homes, research

labs and spin-off shopping franchises, Scripps failed to navigate the political

terrain of farmers, locals, and activists, in particular, the scrappy direct

action-oriented Everglades Earth First!, and their biotech city idea was shot

down in court.

In efforts to ameliorate the debt that the State of Florida incurred to Scripps

during the loss, Scripps was allowed to purchase a piece of property

alongside the campus of FAU, where they have since erected the

contemporary Bauhaus-style, concrete-glass-and-brick monstrosity that is

now the largest biotech facility in Florida. Their dream of a Scripps City has

now led them onto new grounds the neighboring Briger Forest, where FAU

and the State of Florida promises to fund their wild exploits out of taxpayer

dollars. There they will be allowed to pursue animal testing on primates as

well as rodents, cats and dogs using government funds and University

assistance.

Recently, the National Institute of Health gave Scripps $3.45 million to

collaborate with Novartis Pharma AG on a project called, National

Cooperative Drug Discovery Group for the Treatment of Mood Disorders or

Nicotine Addiction". In an ironic twist worthy ofA Brave New World, Scripps

boasts on its website that this new research may generate new models of

depression. With its reputation for funding the notorious animal testing lab,

Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), the name Novartis indicates that the

network of international animal cruelty is, indeed, sadly spreading.

Extensive research done by rigorous activists has uncovered scientists

working in the area, who have sourced their primates through the infamous

company, Primate Products, whose brutal methods were uncovered in leaked

photos last Summer. Scipps, itself, has been sited by the Food and Drug

Administration for cruel practices used on chimpanzees undergoing testing

for Hepatitis C and the street drug, Ecstasy. Furthermore, their ongoingcollaborative relationship with the notoriously corrupt and paranoid

multinational seed company Monsanto, raises questions about a third party

the possible use of private security firms like Blackwater to investigate

environmental activists. But the reach of Scripps goes far deeper than

biotech alone.

The Scripps family is well connected. H.W. Scripps Company was started by

its namesake with $10,000 way back, about a century ago, and has become

the ninth largest mass-media conglomerate in the US with ties to a myriad

of newspapers as well as television networks and other forms of media. In

2006, news broke that a journalist working for the Scripps Howard Media

Service received $60,000 from Monsanto in exchange for pro-biotech

articles, revealing the depth of informal relationships between the

newspaper conglomerate and animal testing as well as GM products in

ander Reid Ross: Biodiversity Versus Biotech http://www.counterpunch.org/ross0222

06-Mar-11

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general.

More revealingly, H.W. Scripps owns the Home and Garden cable TV station,

with 85 million subscribers, along with a shop at home network and the Food

Network, while being ensconced in the interests of the largest seed and

pharmaceutical corporations in the world. From the animal testing labs to

Monsanto and Novaris to your television set in one great whirlwind. This is,

of course, not to mention the Scripps family's ties to hospitals and

permanent cosmetics companies. (According to one website, A 'Wellness

Day' will be coming to a Scripps Hospital near you.)

To round out the portrait of monopolization and graft, H.W. Scripps owns a

small conglomerate of at least six newspapers in South East Florida one ofwhich, the Jupiter Courier, is the weekly rag that serves the same city where

all this is taking place: Jupiter, Florida. Suffice it to say, until the treesit

came up, coverage of Scripps had been one dimensional to say the least, but

the reigns of human nature are starting to slip from the grasp of industry.

Risking SLAPP suits and charges under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act,

activists maintained a 56-hour vigil outside of the Scripps Research Institute

with rotating protests in solidarity with the treesit. The combination of

on-the-ground direct action, media work, letter writing, and months of

grassroots organizing has paid off with surprisingly good coverage from local

television stations and newspapers that are not in line with the Scripps

family. Scripps has even dug themselves into a little hole in the eyes of the

public by reneging on their promise to employ locals to staff their lab, so the

campaign is likely to generate support from more diverse sectors of society

than it otherwise would.

Although Scripps employees are up to their necks in Greenwashing, joining

international symposiums on biodiversity while animals from all around the

world are dieing in their labs, the public is becoming increasingly savvy in

avoiding the quagmire of public relations and lies upholding their logic.

Recognizing the urgent need to reclaim urbanizing spaces from miserablist

biopolitics, Everglades Earth First! and other activists are taking a stand

against development by occupying the last bits of wild heritage left through

peaceful methods and holding onto it, quite literally, for dear life.

Alexander Reid Ross writes for the Earth First! Journal

For more information on this subject, visit evergladesearthfirst.org, or email

floridatreesit@gmail.com

ander Reid Ross: Biodiversity Versus Biotech http://www.counterpunch.org/ross0222

06-Mar-11