Climbing atop a van outside a downtown Seattle McDonald’s Monday afternoon, the world’s most famous French farmer urged hundreds of anti-WTO protesters to "throw multinationals into the sea."

Puffing on his signature pipe, José Bové encouraged the crowd to resist the WTO. The sheep farmer, who has achieved international fame since he used a tractor to pull the roof off a McDonald’s in France last September, rallied against the WTO’s negative effect on farmers around the world. Singling out the United States’ attempts to export bio-engineered foods, he cried, "We don’t want any more hormones in our beef."

Though the crowd was well behaved while Bové had the stage, earlier actions by the protesters had some observers wondering whether the demonstration would indeed stay peaceful.

Assembling outside the McDonald’s on Pine and Second streets at 1:45 p.m., a mixed crowd of protesters began to vent their frustration on the windows of the fast food chain. To the surprise of diners inside the restaurant, demonstrators pounded their fists on the windows and called for a boycott of the Golden Arches. A few protesters directed their anger against a hamburger banner hanging outside the restaurant, tearing it from the walls.

As the crowd quieted down, Professor Nanjunda Swamy of Bangalore, India, was the first to speak from the top of the van. Interrupted briefly when members of a group flying a "Vegan Resistance" banner were asked by protest organizers to climb off the top of a city bus, professor Swamy labeled fast food chains a "global problem."

Asked about his impressions of the American protesters after the rally, Professor Swami said that he was pleased: "There is a lot of power in non-violence."

In a show of international solidarity, Swamy and Bové were joined on the van by Americans Bill Christison, president of the National Family Farmer Coalition, and farm advocate John Kianson. As the rally drew to a close, the four shared bread and some of Bové’s famous Roquefort cheese.

Bové then urged the demonstrators to disperse without taking further action against McDonald’s.

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