Germany and (biotech) technophobia

What Lurks Beneath in key industries of the future.

By Stefan Theil | NEWSWEEK

Published Jul 18, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Jul 27, 2009

"Other countries have rebelled against technology perceived by the public as dangerous, but none as vigorously as Germany. The French hate GMO—but love their nuclear power. America stopped building nuclear reactors after the Three Mile Island reactor accident in 1979—but millions of consumers eat GMO food products every day. It is in Germany that these aversions have struck most often and most strongly, for historical, cultural, and political reasons."

Excerpt from a fascinating read:

Green technophobia is by no means just a German phenomenon. Much of Europe is on a crusade against biotech crops, seen as a dangerous contamination of the human food supply. The Swiss have gone even further than the Germans, writing the dignity of plants into their Constitution. (In theory, genetically engineered pest resistance should raise the dignity of plants, but that's not how Swiss legislators see it.) In America, born-again politicians helped place severe restrictions on stem-cell research that were rolled back only this year by the new administration. Countries like Sweden and Italy also legislated against nuclear power. Since then, however, they have reversed course. Worried about energy dependence and global warming, they no longer believe they can afford the luxury of abandoning an emissions-free power source.

But it's in Germany where environmental techno-angst seems to have found its most fertile ground, despite the country's rich history of industrial leadership and technological innovation. The current crackdown on green biotech is particularly poignant. Historically, German companies have been at the forefront of agricultural technology and plant breeding, and it was German researchers who invented some of the gene-splicing technologies on which the science is based today. Yet in April, Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner overrode the protest of 1,600 of those scientists and banned the only genetically engineered plant commercially farmed in Germany, a strain of feed corn resistant to a destructive pest common in Bavaria and Brandenburg. Even more disturbing, Germany has been curtailing academic research. The number of experimental field trials has plummeted from 81 in 2007 to 35 this year. Since last year, four universities have voluntarily ordered their geneticists to shut down field studies, citing public pressure and the systematic destruction of their research by activists opposed to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Stefan Hormuth, president of Giessen University, explained that he could no longer resist "massive opposition from politicians and the general public" and had acted in order to "maintain the university's reputation." The German Academy of Science has warned of the threat to academic freedom. The irony: most of the abandoned field trials weren't experiments with radical new varieties, but government-funded impact assessments to verify the safety of GMOs.

Predictably, the crackdown is leading to an exodus of talent and business. Ralph Bock, director of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam, south of Berlin, says 80 percent of his research team leaders have left or plan to leave the country. The institute's fields were among the 100 or so destroyed by activists over the past decade. Bock says 24-hour protection is too expensive and has therefore suspended field trials. Nearby, Bayer CropScience, which in the past developed some of the institute's spinoff technology, this spring announced it will close its R&D facility for GMO crops and move to more tech-friendly Belgium. BASF, another German agro-tech giant, says it has suspended research into new GMO varieties designed for the European market. Since 2007, BASF has shifted new investment almost completely to the U.S.

Read the whole thing: http://www.newsweek.com/id/207380