GMOs in Germany and Europe: Advocacy groups destroy research crops

Against this background only a few farmers in Germany even care about GMOs. Farmers here are not allowed to grow genetically engineered crops. The only GE seed ever approved in the European Union is MON 810. It’s grown in six EU countries: Spain, Portugal, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania. Six others ban its cultivation: Germany, Austria, Hungary, Greece, France and Luxembourg. Safety is not an issue, however; every European country imports GMO corn and soybeans in massive quantities to be used as animal feed.

The MON 810 seed has been modified to generate a bacteria-based natural insecticide (used in spray form by organic farmers). Versions of insect-resistant GE seeds (corn/maize, eggplant, poplar, potato, rice, soybeans) have been used safely for two decades or more in the US, Canada, Bangladesh, India, Argentina, Brazil, China and elsewhere. They have been embraced by farmers, who have benefited from a dramatic decrease in the use of sometimes highly toxic synthetic and natural pesticides—by as much as 90 percent.

The use of MON810 was prohibited In 2009 in Germany after safety concerns propagated by GMO opponents scared politicians into passing moratoriums and eventually bans, almost always over the objections of farmers and the mainstream science community. Since 2013, European scientists have not even participated in any field tests of genetically modified plants. The rules for growing GMOs in Germany, if any new seed varieties should ever be approved, are very strict. If a farmer plans to seed a GMO crop she has to report this project to the Bundesamt für Verbraucherschutz und Lebensmittelsicherheit (Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety).

The public has access online to where GMO crops are planted. That sounds like a nod to transparency, but in reality in the past such disclosure has resulted in anti-GMO activists destroying academic and government research field tests in Germany, France, Switzerland and the UK.

In addition, a farmer growing GMOs is responsible if the seed should cross pollinate a neighbor’s field—what activists call “contamination.” Cross pollination happens in farming all the time to no harm, with issues amicably resolved between farmers. But when GMOs are involved the issue is elevated to a serious violation with potentially catastrophic legal and economic consequences, even though safety and health concerns are nil. As a result no farmer would dare risk using GE seeds.