Genetically engineered foods in Europe
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In Germany, public opinion runs strongly against genetically engineered crops. Scientists who work in the field endure protests and occasional threats. So why do the scientists stay in Germany? One reason: the German government provides generous research funding. David Hecht reports. (photo: David Hecht)
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MARCO WERMAN: Much of the food grown around the world these days from corn to soybeans to canola is genetically engineered. That’s not the case in Europe though. European governments have banned the commercial use of almost all so-called transgenic crops. Even attempts to grow these crops experimentally are often stopped by public protests and civil disobedience. That’s especially true in Germany. Yet Germany remains home to some of the world’s leading scientists in the field. Reporter David Hecht explores why.
DAVID HECHT: The German village of Rauischholzhausen dates back to 759 A.D. and little here appears to have changed since then. Ancient farm houses sit nestled amongst rolling green hills. People make bread from locally grown grain. Milk comes straight from the cow. Much of the farming is organic, but farmers Harry and Margaret Kull say their way of life is threatened by scientists who’ve been growing genetically modified crops on fields nearby.
MALE INTERPRETER: It’s this Frankenstein effect. They see these fascinating possibilities of gene transfer, transferring the genes of a fish into a plant for instance.
FEMALE INTERPRETER: Normally you’d think that scientists want to work for the benefit of humanity, but these scientists don’t care about the world.
MALE INTERPRETER: For me, it’s criminal.
HECHT: The target of their anger is one professor in particular, Wolfgang Friedt. He heads the Department of Plant Breeding at the University of Giessen and it genetically modifying canola to improve the yield and nutritional properties of its oil. He says he’s used to public anger over his work.
WOLFGANG FRIEDT: There is a certain part o the population who you cannot discuss with because they have an absolute opinion and would not depart from it.
HECHT: Friedt conducts much of his research in laboratories and greenhouses. But to test the results, he also needs to conduct outdoor field trials. Two years ago protestors came and dug up his seedlings.
FRIEDT: And one year they came early enough to occupy the field, build a camp on this field, stay there for some weeks so that we could not sow.
HECHT: And it’s not just protestors he has to contend with. Local political leaders have tried to stop his work. Franz Kahler is the Deputy Mayor of the nearby city of Marburg.
MAYOR FRANZ KAHLER: If you have fields with transgenetic plants there is the danger that the land all around this is infected by these plants. And so we wanted to stop Professor Friedt and the University Giessen.
HECHT: In 2008 local politicians declared the whole district off limits to genetically modified crops. The declaration wasn’t legally binding, but it put so much pressure on university administrators that eventually they told Professor Friedt to discontinue his field work. Friedt says that was a big blow.
FRIEDT: I must say I’m certainly disappointed. This is clearly restricting our possibilities.
HECHT: It also raises ethical questions for the university, says the man who was the institution’s Vice President at the time. He is Professor Karl-Heinz Kogel.
KARL-HEINZ KOGEL: There was a strong criticism from the scientific community and they said for a university you cannot stop science and experiments just because of political pressure.
HECHT: In other parts of Germany scientists doing genetic engineering endure more than political pressure. Some have had their windows smashed. Others have faced death threats. Professor Lothar Willmitzer directs the Max Plank Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology. He once found a bomb in his office.
LOTHAR WILLMITZER: About 10 bombs were placed, not only at my place, but also at other institutes doing gene technology. Some of them did explode and so on, and lots of threats and I know of colleagues which always look below their car before they enter the car and so on. We had some tough times in Germany.
HECHT: So why do German scientists work in a field that provokes so much public hostility? Why don’t they move to the U.S., Canada or Australia where genetic engineered crops are produced commercially with little protest. One reason they say is that Germany is their home, but they also stay because of the generous funding they receive. The government finances research into genetically engineered crops at some 60 German universities and scientific institutions. And yet the German government also bans the growing of these crops. Again, the University of Giessen’s Wolfgang Friedt, whose work was shut down.
FRIEDT: It’s crazy. The research ministry is supporting big programs on modern breeding technology. At the same time, another ministry would prevent to grow this in the field.
HECHT: It does sound schizophrenic, says Michael Bolker, a molecular biologist at the University of Marburg. But he says there’s logic to what the government is doing.
MICHAEL BOLKER: The government wants that the German industry, or the German companies get their share on the world market. So even if you cannot sell it here in Germany, they have to maintain the state of the art, you have to maintain the state of research in Germany.
HECHT: German conglomerates such as Bayer Crop Science are investing billions of dollars in research on genetically engineered crops. And some 50 smaller German companies are working with researchers at universities to also develop transgenic crops. They have no chance of being sold on the European market at the moment, but Friedt says that could change.
FRIEDT: Time will show that it will not be possible to isolate the country like Germany, or even the European Union, from the rest of the world because the technology will spread, the crops produced that way will spread. We’ll have finally the whole world covered with genetically engineered crops in one way or the other.
HECHT: Of course many Germans, such as the farmers at Rauishholzhausen, are fighting to keep that vision from coming to pass. But the European commission is displaying a new found openness to genetically engineered crops. In March it approved commercial production of the continent’s first genetically modified potato. It’s not meant to be eaten, but to provide starch for the manufacture of paper and adhesives. The potato was engineered by the largest chemical company in the world, BASF, which has its headquarters in Germany. For The World, I’m David Hecht in Berlin.
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