MONSANTO UPROOTED

Germany Bans Cultivation of GM Corn

04/14/2009 04:26 PM

Germany has banned the cultivation of GM corn, claiming that MON 810 is dangerous for the environment. But that argument might not stand up in court and Berlin could face fines totalling millions of euros if American multinational Monsanto decides to challenge the prohibition on its seed.

The sowing season may be just around the corner, but this year German farmers will not be planting gentically modified crops: German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner announced Tuesday she was banning the cultivation of GM corn in Germany.

DPA

Greenpeace activists take a sample from a Monsanto test site near Borken in North Rhine-Westphalia: The GM crop MON 810 has been banned in Germany.

Under the new regulations, the cultivation of MON 810, a GM corn produced by the American biotech giant Monsanto, will be prohibited in Germany, as will the sale of its seed. Aigner told reporters Tuesday she had legitimate reasons to believe that MON 810 posed "a danger to the environment," a position which she said the Environment Ministry also supported. In taking the step, Aigner is taking advantage of a clause in EU law which allows individual countries to impose such bans.

"Contrary to assertions stating otherwise, my decision is not politically motivated," Aigner said, referring to reports that she had come under pressure to impose a ban from within her party, the conservative Bavaria-based Christian Social Union. She stressed that the ban should be understood as an "individual case" and not as a statement of principle regarding future policy relating to genetic engineering.

Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) both welcomed the ban. Greenpeace's genetic engineering expert, Stephanie Töwe, said the decision was long overdue, explaining that numerous scientific studies demonstrated that GM corn was a danger to the environment.

However the ban could prove costly for the German government. Experts in Aigner's ministry recently told SPIEGEL that it will be hard to prove conclusively that MON 810 damages the environment, which could enable Monsanto to win a court case opposing the ban and potentially expose the government to €6-7 million ($7.9-9.2 million) in damages.

Monsanto said Tuesday that it would look into the question of whether it would take legal proceedings as quickly as possible. Andreas Thierfelder, spokesman for Monsanto Germany, said the matter was very urgent as the planting season was just about to start.

Aigner has recently come under pressure from Bavaria to ban GM corn. Bavaria's Environment Minister Markus Söder wants to turn Germany into a "GM food-free zone." Environmental groups have long called for a ban on GM crops in Germany, arguing that they pose a danger to plants and animals.

However, supporters of genetic engineering argue that a ban could prompt research companies and institutes to pull up stakes and leave Germany. Wolfgang Herrmann, president of Munich's Technical University, has said that a prohibition risks precipitating "an exodus of researchers."

The issue has exposed a split between Bavaria's CSU and its larger sister party, Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union. Katherina Reiche, deputy chairwoman of the CDU/CSU's parliamentary group, has complained of the "CSU's irresponsible, cheap propaganda," claiming that it could harm German industry. She argued that anti-GM sentiment was one reason a subsidiary of the German chemical giant Bayer decided to moved its facilities for genetic engineering from Potsdam, near Berlin, to Belgium.

MON 810 was approved for cultivation in Europe by the European Union in 1998 and is currently the only GM crop which can be grown in Germany. The plant produces a toxin to fight off a certain pest, the voracious larvae of the corn borer moth. The crop was due to be planted this year on a total area of around 3,600 hectares (8,896 acres) in Germany. The cultivation of MON 810 is already banned in five other EU member states, namely Austria, Hungary, Greece, France and Luxembourg.

dgs

THE WORLD FROM BERLIN

'There Was No Reason to Accept The Risks of GM Corn'

04/15/2009 03:34 PM

The German government's decision to ban the cultivation of genetically modified corn has been welcomed by most media commentators in Germany as an overdue step in response to fears that it poses unforeseeable risks. One paper, however, scoffs that "progress has become a dirty word" in Germany.

The news Tuesday that Germany was joining five other European Union countries in banning the cultivation of genetically modified corn met with mixed reactions. Environmentalists were delighted, while supporters of GM foods warned it could lead to an exodus of research efforts from the country.

DPA

Monsanto's offices in Düsseldorf: The GM crop MON 810 has been banned in Germany.

German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner told reporters she had legitimate reasons to believe that MON 810, a GM corn produced by the American biotech giant Monsanto, posed "a danger to the environment," a position which she said the Environment Ministry also supported. In taking the step, Aigner is taking advantage of a clause in EU law which allows individual countries to impose such bans.

German media commentators have broadly welcomed the decision, although they say political factors may well have played a part. Aigner is a member of the conservative Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, and the CSU is keen to tap popular opposition to genetically modified crops in the heavily agricultural Alpine region in the run-up to September's German general election.

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"The ban is a severe defeat for industry and research. Agriculture Minister Aigner is being accused of having taken a purely political decision. There are no serious studies that prove the corn poses a danger, its supporters say. But anyone who uses that argument merely proves that they haven't understood the problem. As long as the crop's usefulness hasn't been established, there is no reason to accept the risks involved in farming it. Aigner had to issue a ban. Anything else would have been a gigantic open-air experiment with unforeseeable consequences."

The left-wing Frankfurter Rundschau writes:

"Genetically modified corn is a risk to our environment, is totally superfluous in farming, represents industrial agriculture, causes pointless costs to food production in Germany and can even ruin beekeepers. All this has been discussed at length. The fact that this has finally led to an official ban is to be welcomed."

The conservative Die Welt writes:

"Progress has become a dirty word, even with the Social Democrats who once defined themselves as a party of progress. Apart from a meek FDP (eds. note: the opposition liberal Free Democrats), no one dares to argue in favor of technical innovation if the activists shout 'fear' loud enough. Just think of all the innovations that have been blown up into bugaboos in recent years -- mobile phones, PET bottles, PVC window frames, computers, the Internet, the Transrapid magnetic-levitation train, medical gene technology and much else. But in the case of green gene technology, the fearmongers are able to score their biggest triumph since the phase-out of nuclear power.

"They persuaded people that the food we currently eat is completely natural -- and that nature is always a good thing. But 'conventional' agriculture involves exposing seeds to radioactive rays or making it mutate with the help of poisons. There's nothing natural about these coarse and unfocussed methods. Genetic technology offers, for the first time, the possibility to precisely select a desired gene."

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

"The fact that only water fleas and butterflies have been damaged doesn't disprove the warnings about unforeseeable effects. Who knows the extent to which humans may be affected in the long term by something that immediately kills off small creatures?

"Rejecting this type (of GM corn) isn't the pet project of peripheral social groups but is government policy in five EU countries."

The left-wing Berliner Zeitung writes:

"Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner was right to ban the type of GM corn that originated in the US and has been approved in Europe for 11 years. Growing and selling MON 810 is irresponsible because no one can predict the risks to animals, other plants and not least human beings.

"The government did the right thing -- but for the wrong reasons, and very late. Countless questions regarding the impact and dangers were unanswered even when Brussels approved MON 810 despite existing doubts and when then-Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer permitted its use in Germany. Consumers and environmentalists protested at the time but were labeled enemies of progress.

"The new studies don't show any new risks -- they simply prove that the old warning about the risks was justified. It's a scandal that the subsequent ban was even necessary because the farming of genetically modified plants had been permitted without a thorough examination of all the possible dangers."

-- David Crossland, 2 p.m. CET