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Germany Bans Cultivation of GM Corn
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.
Activists fly a kite to protest against the cultivation of genetically modified maize. (AFP) 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.
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.
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17 Comments so far
Show AllDas ist gut.
Ja wohl--kein Frankenfood im Reich!
Poet
I just have to wonder... how do European politicians run campaigns for office? Do you all have public financing for them? Because the reason that we get corporatized officials here in the US is directly related to the fact that lobbyists are buying them off so they can pay for their expensive political campaigns to get elected...
Something really needs to be done here in the US to stop all the kowtowing to big business. It's really shameful.
I hope Monsanto goes down hard.
To get rid of the buying of candidates only 3 simple things need be done:
1) only allow registered voters (ie human beings) to contribute to candidates.
2) only allow a maximum of $1000 to be dontated to a candidate.
3) any $$ left over after the election must be donated to a charity.
I've actually been floating a 4th idea in the mix. Rather than impose an amount that can be raised, what if we limited what the candidate could SPEND? Wouldn't that even the playing field a bit? It's much easier to identify expenses, I think. Any amount over could still go to charity, or be put into a pool for public financing of campaigns... Just a thought.
Your heart is in the right place, but you still have not gotten to the heart of the problem which is that candidates should not have to buy access to being heard by the public. When access becomes a commodity to be bought and sold then candiates, voters, and elections become the same thing.
Once a candidate has enough petition signatures to qualify (no paying of fees allowed!)they should be required to appear at all debates and other candidate forums in order to be confronted by the electorate instead of bought and hired PR flacks (otherwise known as journalists).
Poet
Poet - you are completely right. Money should never be the primary factor in choosing our candidates. And yes all candidates that have registered should be part of the debates. What they did this year with both the republican and democratic candidates in the debates was sad. Between Kucinich, Gravel and even Ron Paul getting excluded. And of course third parties aren't allowed at all.
The implications of this decision is huge, as Germany is the largest market in the European Union. As any marketer of any product that desires to be sold in Europe will tell you, if you do not crack the German market, then you can forget about the rest of Europe. Monsanto has been drooling at the thought of their GM products penetrating the lucrative EU food market, where prices and margins are generally higher than in North America, consumer resistance notwithstanding.
Monsanto und Frankennahrung raus!
And declare war on Monsanto and its enablers if the GM food is used as a weapon of economic warfare against Germany.
This goes to show how upside-down the world trade policies are.
Monsanto should have to prove that GM corn is safe rather than having Germany (or any other country) prove that it is harmful.
But it is no surprise since the trade agreements were written to help the corporations like Monsanto rather than to help the people of the world.
"Better dying through chemistry"
Ich bien ein frankenweiney. Ah, but don't you see, this is good news for the crop dusters and the chemical producers. More air time and more product sold. Don't breath too much if you're downwind. The farmers are gonna kill the little bugs one way or another.
The farmers will will have to use all of these sprays unless they return to sustainable agriculture - things like crop rotation and getting away from monoculture crops. But that would require forward thinking by our governments and corporations and that is not going to happen.
We have 20,000 years experience in sustainable agriculture, 50 years experience in non-sustainable oil-based chemical agriculture, and 10 years experience in frankenfood agriculture. New is not always bad, but it is not always better either.
The free-trade corporations should not be dictating our agricultural policies.
"An exodus of researchers"? Who, Doctors Strangelove, Frankenstein, & Mengele?
The fact that EUans pay a higher percent of wages for food than USans proves that not everyone seeks out the lowest cost food but some seek out a balance between quality and cost.
EUans widely demand environmental sustainability, genetic and ecosystem diversity, a healthy connection between societies and nature, and the general health of societies, both physical health of individuals and healthy occupations that lead to greater fulfillment, all add quality or value to food production, and they have a right to demand such quality from the market, unimpeded.
Monosonto's MON 810 damages the environment by encouraging monoculture food production. It's a fact that nature controls pests through polyculture, and it's a fact that the presence of monocultures suppresses the ecosystem's ability to sustain itself through polyculture, by interrupting the natural spatial distribution of populations in the ecosystem.
Monosonto GM products (and its more general philosophy) create other unnecessary risks and pressures on ecosystems and societies. But the facts that Monosonto actively suppresses polyculture with MON 810 (and other products), and seeks to suppress rather than supply the proven EUan demand for natural, sustainable food production, proves that Monosonto engages in predatory market practice.
It is a shame that American politicians HATE American citizens so much - or they might try banning Genetically Modified foods from being eaten here in America (They Only care about profits, themselves and their party - and yes, this includes Obama). For those of you unaware of MONSANTO - they are an EVIL, EVIL corporation! I suggest that ALL of you either Google or go out and buy and watch "The World According to Monsanto" and also "The Future of Food" I would even suggest watching "King Corn" but this isn't about Monsanto (although it is similar in idea). But seriously watch "The World According to Monsanto" and "the Future of Food" You will Be Blown Away and will Seriously reconsider the way you eat and what you eat!
also please visit my blog @ http://enemyartistkristofer.blogspot.com
Aigner shouldn't have limited her decision to environmental damage but included the immense health hazards posed by GMOs to human and animal health alike, which has been amply documented in scientific studies. I live in South Africa where the biotech stooges planted in our government keep kissing Monsanto's toxic a***. Note to any German "researcher" heading our way - stay away, we've got plenty of Mengele clones of our own! According to two recent peer-reviewed government studies, the consumption of MON 810 causes INFERTILITY (Austria) and IMMUNODEFICIENCY (Italy), notably a sharp drop in the CD4+ cell count in the latter case, which bodes the question to what 5.7 million allegedly HIV positive people in our country are actually reacting when subjected to HIV testing - HIV or the toxicity of their staple food which happens to be MONSANTO's GM maize, containing antibiotic-resistant marker genes (yet our physicians are still scratching their head about the sharp rise in multi-drug resistant TB cases?!) and the cauliflower mosaic virus, which is closely related to the Hepatitis B and HIV virus! The dangers of the cauliflower mosaic virus have been amply documented in scientific literature
http://www.psrast.org/jccamv.htm and
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/camvrecdis.php
In addition, Monsanto's Roundup Ready soy, cotton and maize contain toxic
GLYPHOSATE, which according to CRIIGEN's press release (January 2009) causes
embryonic, umbilical cord and placental cell DEATH!
Full text:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/tx800218n
The new Roundup version also contains AGENT ORANGE
The adverse health effect of Agent Orange in Vietnam is common knowledge and could explain the major health problems, environment damage and loss of biodiversity in Canada.
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/whoOwnsLifeNotMonsanto.php?comment=1
Epidemiological studies have previously linked glyphosate to spontaneous abortions, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. Laboratory studies showed that glyphosate inhibits transcription in sea urchin eggs and delays development. Brief exposures to glyphosate in rats caused liver damage, and adding the surfactant in Roundup had a synergistic effect, causing greater liver damage. Roundup was also found to be much more lethal to frogs than to weeds, and could have contributed to the global demise of amphibians within the past decades [3] ( Roundup Kills Frogs , SiS 26).
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/DMPGR.php
At this rate there will be nothing safe to eat in America but old wallpaper.