Sieg für Umweltaktivisten: Deutschlands Felder gentech-frei - taz.de
Sieg für Umweltaktivisten: Deutschlands Felder gentech-frei - taz.de
Germany grows on fields in 2013 for the first time in 20 years not a single genetically modified plant. As the last holder of a license for field trials this year has Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) canceled its planned experiment in Saxony-Anhalt, Gatersleben. The IPK wanted to sow winter wheat GM these days.
"Our field trial will not take place this year", said IPC spokesman Roland with snow taz.am the weekend. He argued with the destruction of field trials by militant opponents of genetic engineering. They would have meant that "in Germany there are hardly any release of genetically modified crops."
From the list of the competent Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety shows that the IPK experiment with winter wheat this year than last experiment could have taken place.
he trial was scheduled to land the company Biotech farm in Üplingen. Their CEO Kerstin Schmidt said the taz.am weekend: "We would do no business with only one attempt." The technical and human effort is not worthwhile.
The movement is Mainstream
Thus the experimental cultivation in Germany after the commercial cultivation of GM crops in 2012 now come to a halt - another victory for the anti-GM movement.
The movement has captured the mainstream in 1996: Back then, the first genetically modified plants were imported from the USA to Germany. The environmental organization Greenpeace blocked vessels that transported the soy, and launched a European campaign. Result: Supported tolerated or 1996 according to a survey commissioned by the EU Commission, only 56 percent of Germans genetic engineering in agriculture, it was three years later, only 49 percent.
The activists used the fear of many of the new technology. They fear that the plants could cause allergies or cancer, for example. The alleged evidence, however, are highly controversial. But also allow GM crops to plant for economic reasons over the years to the same large fields of the same plant species. In such monocultures to pests and diseases can spread faster. In these fields survive less animal and plant species.
Through intensive lobbying reached about the Association for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND) that the EU in 2003 a momentous resolution was passed: If a food consists of more than 0.9 percent GM crops has to be identified. This allowed consumers to consciously decide against genetic engineering in the supermarket. Therefore, it hardly dared a food manufacturer to handle genetically modified plants.
Campaigner against GM corn
With hundreds of information sessions in Bavaria, the opponents of genetic engineering helped that eventually toppled the government party, the CSU in the GM issue. Therefore banned in 2009, the then Federal Minister of Agriculture Ilse Aigner (CSU), the GM maize MON810 from Monsanto in Germany.
Monsanto competitor BASF gave up in January 2012 and stopped in front of the already hinsiechenden growing its GM potato Amflora - among other things, after the Federal Constitutional Court in 2010 confirmed the restrictive German Genetic Engineering Act. Thus, the commercial cultivation in Germany was at the end.
Monsanto admitted in May 2013 to its defeat in the taz. CEO Ursula Lüttmer-Ouazane said about the cultivation of GM crops in Germany: "We understand that not having the broad acceptance of the moment." Soon after Monsanto withdrew four of his eight submissions for cultivation in the EU, the other are to follow soon. The Group intends to renew the license for MON810, which is set in Germany overridden.
Is this final victory of the opponents of genetic engineering? What about the massive imports of GM food? Join the debate We look forward to your opinion.
