In what is thought to be the first such incident of its kind in Latin America, GM crops are being blamed for an unprovoked attack on a 58-year-old farmer in Argentina.
The farmer, Sancho Blanco-Negro, told doctors at the Eva Peron Memorial Hospital that he was taking a perusory stroll through his GM maize, when he heard a "rustling noise", before everything went black. When he awoke, he had a bruise on the side of his head in the shape of an ear of maize.
The 'attack' happened at Senor Blanco-Negro's farm close to San Antonio de Areca, the self-styled Gaucho capital, where men eat beef, and nothing else.
Police are taking his claims seriously. Officers from the Eva Peronista Polizia Centrale de Buenos Aires say that, although the man had been drinking heavily, they have long suspected that GM crops are capable of turning on humans, in the style of the attacks mentioned in the John Wyndham book The Day Of The Triffids.
Environmentalists claim that this is exactly the sort of thing they had been warning the Argentine government about. The 13 million hectares of GM soybean, and the million hectares, between them, of GM maize and GM cotton growing in Argentina could become no-go zones if the crops are able to mutate into killing plants.
The Argentine government has described the environmentalists claim as:
"Loco."
