IRISH anti-GM food campaigners remain defiant after the outcome of their New Ross trial on criminal charges.
Two days of principled testimony and anti-GM food protest on its streets, all ending with chants of "go organic!", songs and samba music outside the courthouse where protesters, wearing futuristic protective white suits waved "GM crops . . . untested science" placards.
It was a phone call from The Irish Times on June 18th last that first alerted Monsanto that its trial site close to Waterford estuary may have been sabotaged.
Beet farmer Martin Foley, whose land at Arthurstown, Co Wexford was being used for the trial, confirmed what had happened.
More than 50 per cent of 10,000 plants with a foreign gene incorporated to withstand the herbicide RoundUp were pulled up or mutilated. It was a routine test to evaluate the revolutionary beet in Irish conditions: thousands of such investigations had been done elsewhere.
But it was a crop, along with others of the GM generation, that was arousing far from routine reaction.
A local organic farmer, Ivan Ward, staged a march from Ballyhack to Duncannon to vent outrage when Monsanto applied to the Environmental Protection Agency for a licence to test the beet just fields away from his holding.
About 30 people marched with hoes in hand, highlighting what they considered was a more benign form of farming.
There too, was the grand master of self-sufficiency and farming with the land, John Seymour (84), who has a holding less than four miles away, and his friend, New Ross publican Richard Roche.
It was summer 1998 and a season of GM crop sabotage across Europe. In Ireland, there were rumblings that "acts of public defiance", similar to those of the GenetiX Snowball campaign in the UK, would follow.
Monsanto decided to employ Probe Security Network to guard its five Irish test sites especially as a protest meeting in Duncannon was flagged for June 21st. It emerged in court that security extended to surveillance. Those travelling to the gathering from Dublin were filmed with a long-range camera from across the Liffey as they boarded a bus.
Many were fired up by the meeting and a song from Seymour about the arrival of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to Wexford fields. Yet it was curiosity more than anything that impelled them toward the GM compound, located in the heart of a field of conventional beet Seymour and Roche were the advance party, laughing nervously on seeing the extent of damage caused by what the former considered to be "the fairies" days earlier. They were arrested when gardai emerged from the bushes. They left only to return on meeting a 70-strong entourage.
What followed was a curious mix of good-humoured protest and friendly chat with seven gardai present on the legal implications of their actions.
But many were angry at encountering what they perceived to be contaminated soil after the irretrievable release of highly contentious genetic material into the Irish environment.
About 30 got under a perimeter fence and pulled up GM beet or simply trampled on it.
Six of the seven defendants to appear in New Ross Court in the first Irish case of GM crop sabotage admitted their involvement. The seventh, freelance journalist Caoimhin Woods, admitted forcible entry. But all charges, notably those of criminal damage, were contested.
Socialist TD Joe Higgins, who had addressed the meeting, spotted cameras lurking in the bushes. It heightened resolve. With Greens Nuala Ahern MEP and John Gormley TD, they were the most readily identifiable, but none of them was charged. At a preliminary hearing in February, Seymour and others brought their hoes to town. At a press conference, Seymour handed out copies of his latest of some 40 books, full of his unique rumbustiousness and irreverence. There were digs in there at modern scientists not to mention anti-Monsanto vitriol.
It was decided not to bring hoes to court in case they were regarded as weapons, as opposed "the herbicide of the future" as Seymour calls them. Defence solicitor David Bulbulia declared his clients would show "lawful excuse".
Agreement by Judge Donn chadh O Buachalla to set aside two days for the case was interpreted as - at last - an opportunity to fully spell out their concerns in a State "forum". Many in green ranks have bad memories of Genetic Concern's loss of a 10-day High Court action, which was largely confined to the competency and legal standing of the EPA, and not what they desperately wanted: a legal challenge to the merits of GM crops with a view to preventing their arrival in Ireland.
This week's hearing was noted for the extent of dismissiveness of science relating to GM foods among leading Irish environmental groups represented in court and their deep lack of faith in the EPA's ability to independently regulate industry (whose data is heavily relied upon in its decisionmaking). Deep mistrust of Monsanto pervaded defence testimony.
Such concerns had prompted environmental organisations and other NGOs to pull out of the Government's consultation process on GMOs as they felt they were not getting full and genuine consideration.
Undaunted, Monsanto's Irish business manager, Dr Patrick O'Reilly, accused the saboteurs of not having factual evidence to support their concerns.
On one of the defendants, Hot Press writer Adrienne Murphy - who has covered the GM food controversy extensively - he "would not accept she took the trouble to understand the science". No, he did not agree with The Irish Times, that Genetic Concern "had not gone down the scaremongering route", as it had failed to correct statements Monsanto had shown to be incorrect.
The prosecution made much of the question: would the saboteurs damage a GM crop again? Richard Roche wrestled with the question best. Ultimately, he replied: "I think somebody else will take my place."
The facts were found to be proven and the judge applied the Probation Act to six and ordered Roche to be bound to the peace. He emphasised their "honestly-held beliefs" and good-natured protest.
Ironically, both the defendants and Monsanto welcomed the outcome, with the biotech multinational clinging to what, in effect, was a guilty of criminal damage finding - it was not a licence to go out and repeat the sabotage.
It was another significant event for the growing force of opponents of GM foods, which will make the Department of the Environment's intensive efforts to get its consultative process back on track, with all sides of the debate represented, all the more arduous. To be meaningful, a national GMO policy has to be finalised by Minister Noel Dempsey before an EU showdown due in June.
The Arthurstown Seven case buoyed their supporters. Continuing defiance rather than accommodation of GM crops was the mantra afterwards.
What was most telling, however, was that there was every indication that the Arthurstown Seven would soon be followed by many more times seven.