Mar. 14, 2019
Activists dressed as bees vandalised Bayer’s Paris headquarters on Thursday, during a protest against the corporation’s environmental impact and use of pesticides.
The protesters used fire extinguishers to spray yellow paint on the windows at the entrance of the building, and then poured a sticky liquid outside the front door, in what Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and for Citizens’ Action (ATTAC) spokesperson Annick Coupe called a symbolic gesture.
“You see bees, symbolically, came to tell Bayer that it’s killing them. And so they poured honey, always symbolically, and also poured a sticky product on the ground and brought it back to Bayer,” she said.
The international pharmaceutical corporation came under fire in 2016 after a study they conducted jointly with agricultural company Syngenta revealed their pesticide products caused severe harm to honeybees. The results of the survey were first left unpublished, until environmental group Greenpeace gained access to the study through freedom of information laws.
Coupe said the aim of the protest was “to show that it is possible to act against the multinational companies who contribute to harming our planet with impunity.”
