IndyMedia - Vrij Media Centrum Nederland

Wanneer: 12/12/2015 - 18:21

Today a group of 40 activists exposed Avril as the slippery corporation they are by decorating their administrative office in rue Monceau in Paris.
The group of concerned people painted a red line in front of the building and made a slippery carpet of banana peels to symbolise their misleading and greenwashing activities at COP21.
Avril is one of the main sponsors of the climate summit.

Corporate Europe Obvervatory has been highlighting Avril in their report Lobby Planet Paris: "France’s leading agrofuels producer, Avril is also involved in GM development and industrial animal feed. CEO Beulin Xavier is simultaneously head of the powerful French agro- industry lobby FNSEA, and so close to President Hollande that he is known as the Shadow Agriculture Minister! In collaboration with EU agribusiness lobby Copa-Cogeca, Avril has successfully pushed destructive agrofuels at the EU level."

Avrils name may not be well-known, but it is a huge company with a €7.3 bilion annual turnover and they benefit from tax exemption.
They are also present in the field of finance via its financing and development company Sofiprotéol, which massively invests in GMOs and pesticides development.
The company has joined the “Solutions COP21” platform, advertising the use of their biodiesel and the introduction of large-scale soy production in France as ‘climate solutions’.

About Avrils slippery greenwash strategy: the company "Avril works on environmental protection throughout the sector and has made a commitment as an industrial group to continually improve its ecological footprint.” This clearly conflict with their activities.

Livestock farming and animal feed production are the main causes of deforestation on earth, not to forget water waste and pollution, greenhouse gases emissions, oceans acidification and soil degradation.

Biofuels compete for land use with food production, which aggravate land grabbing.
Besides, making agrofuels is not energy efficient, it requests petrol in the chemical process as well as for energy supply and transportation.
By the way, this process usually uses GMOs grown with fertilizers and pesticides produced by petroleum chemistry.

It is also a very powerful lobby. Indeed, its CEO Xavier Beulin has close ties with French President Hollande.
Xavier has presented the ridiculous and incoherent position that “biotechnology is the future of organic farming.” Avril is standing in the way of small farmers and undermining food sovereignty.

Being the president of the most powerful conventional French farmers union and share holder of almost every French seeds company, he managed to push a law that forces farmes to buy new seeds every year or to pay a tax to the seed-sellers whereas he is supposed to protect farmers interests.

This action was targeting Avril, but our criticism is against all agribusinesses and industrial agriculture.

Watch a video of the action made by Zin TV: http://zintv.org/Action-AVRIL-Sofiproteol