Like Father, Unlike Son.(Jose Bove, genetically modified crops protester profiled)(Brief Article)

For Jose Bove, the real action this week is taking place not on the snowy slopes of Davos but on the barren plains of southern Brazil, where he is attending an alternative summit in support of the world's small farmers. The French activist has made a career out of thwarting governments and multinational corporations that use genetically modified (GM) crops. In 1998, Bove helped destroy five tons of GM corn produced in the south of France by Novartis, the world's leading GM seed producer. Even after he was given an eight-month suspended sentence, Bove remained defiant. "The only regret I have is that I wasn't able to destroy more of it," he said during the trial.

In 1999, Bove famously trashed a half-built McDonald's in southern France in protest of America's fast-food imperialism. Later that year he stood on the front lines of street protests at the World Trade Organization's meeting in Seattle. Over the past two years the mustached sheep farmer has steadily gained public attention and support, morphing from founder of the French Peasant Confederation into a revolutionary leader renowned for his willingness to go to any lengths to save the world from genetic engineering.

While Bove generally targets the faceless giants of corporate America, his attacks have also struck a little closer to home: at his own father, also named Jose Bove. An acclaimed microbiologist and former director of the National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA) in Bordeaux, one of France's leading research facilities, Bove Sr. heatedly defends much of the work that his son opposes. "Consider bananas," he says, over a lunch of lamb shank and Bordeaux in the INRA cafeteria. French scientists are working on a genetically modified banana capable of fighting tooth decay. "In some African countries, where they may not have the money to pay for toothpaste, why not eat a transgenic banana that will prevent cavities instead?" he asks.

The elder Bove believes his son is blind to the potential good that genetic modification can bring. "All his talk has vilified transgenic plants," he says. "In the Middle Ages, people burned witches. Today they burn transgenic plants." Bove Sr. has plenty of fans: in 1997, he helped discover the cause of a disease that was ravaging Brazil's 300 million orange trees. Last year he went to China to examine a severe case of yellow dragon disease, a plant infection transmitted by insects that destroyed more than a million trees. Insecticides didn't help. "It was clear that if we could come up with a transgenic orange tree that was resistant to the disease, it would be a much better solution," he says. In the past six months, Bove Sr., 71, has traveled from Japan to Florida to treat ailing crops. "There could be transgenic solutions," he says, "but convincing people of that is ...