By the time Nature Biotechnology is published, the trial of the Greenpeace 28 will have ended. The 28 ecoactivist defendants who cut down and removed genetically modified (GM) corn from a farm in Lyng in eastern England in July 1999 will either have been convicted or cleared of “criminal damage.” Whatever the outcome in this, however, Greenpeace is guilty of a much broader and far-reaching crime against the environment.

Eco-terrorism is infectious. In the past few months, the Earth Liberation Front has set fire to Michigan State University's agricultural research department, destroyed GM oat plants at the University of Minnesota, and vandalized (presumably by mistake) non-GM corn plantings at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Other activists mistakenly destroyed around 2,000 non-GM tree seedlings at a British Columbia Forests Ministry orchard on Vancouver Island. These more radical groups, however, play the public relations game poorly. Their raids are furtive and their communications aggressive and anonymous. It is easy to brand them as faceless and mindless vandals.

Greenpeace UK, on the other hand, seems to have perfected the art of PR. At the original mayhem in Lyng, Greenpeace invited a reporter from a national newspaper and a video film crew to watch. It did not destroy the crops, it harvested them to prevent the spread of pollen. It planned to return the plants in bags to their owner, Aventis Crop Science. Now Greenpeace is making great play of the protracted legal process.

It is martyring its agricultural vandals. The phrase “Greenpeace 28” used in its press releases has connotations of innocence, recalling as it does for people in the UK “The Guildford Four” and ”The Birmingham Six,” groups wrongly imprisoned for terrorist crimes. On its website (http://www.greenpeace.org.uk), it is cultivating the personalities of its “volunteer” defendants, as if to suggest that being a real person excuses criminal behavior. We can thus learn that the Greenpeace 28 includes a minister of religion, a vegan and vegetarian restauranteur, an engineer, and a mature student in social policy and environmental science.

In short, with the exception of those born into a life of privilege, most of the Greenpeace 28 are salaried middle-class professionals who took a break from their day jobs to have a roll in the corn. They are backed by a slick professional organization that has found a highly effective way of operating at the very edge of the law. It will hardly matter much to the organization if the Greenpeace 28 are convicted. The extended publicity surrounding the case is an elixir for its message.

Whatever Greenpeace achieves in court, its eco-paganistic rituals have already put a hex on genuinely productive efforts to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture. Aventis Crop Science will probably survive the onslaught. The future is much less certain for companies such as Ecogen.

Ecogen is a small company based in Langhorne, PA, which developed a number of biological insect control agents based on pheromones, fungicides, nematodes, and genetically engineered bioinsecticides expressing various Bacillus thuringiensis toxins. Back in 1996, Ecogen struck an R&D deal with Monsanto, the St. Louis (MO) company that was then riding high with investors on the back of its daring strategy of packaging its technology biologically rather than chemically. Monsanto took an equity stake in Ecogen and largely funded its research program until 1998. Monsanto folded Ecogen's Bt toxins into various plant varieties and embarked on extensive field trials. When approved (if approved), some modest royalties will accrue to Ecogen. Adverse public perceptions of GM crops create doubts in financial markets, which left Monsanto with debts it couldn't cover. As a major player in green biotechnology, Monsanto's woes were transmitted to its feeder companies. In September, Ecogen was delisted from Nasdaq because it failed to meet the Nasdaq's net tangible assets criterion. The debts it had accrued simply reduced the value of its business below the Nasdaq threshold.

At the time of its initial agreement with Monsanto, Ecogen employed 100 full-time staff. By December 1999, that number had fallen to 34. Forget the Greenpeace 28; what about the Ecogen 66?