1.EU to 'reflect' on Germany's GM maize ban
2.Luxembourg says no to genetically modified rice
3.The World From Berlin: 'There Was No Reason to Accept The Risks of GM Corn'
4.Farmers demonstrate in Munich against patents on animals and plants
NOTE: Euro News has just concluded an online poll on GM food and farming (17 April 2009):
http://www.euronews.net/news/you/
Should genetically modified organisms be banned in Europe?
Yes: 79%
No: 18%
I don't know: 3%
EXTRACTS: The European Commission sought to force Austria and Hungary to reverse their bans on the crop but its ruling was overturned by a majority of EU nations last month.
A source close to the European Commission told AFP the German ban might bring a revision of the European legislation on GM crops.
Throughout Europe, the public opinion is now against [GM] and if the people were asked one more time, "there would be a rejection." (item 1)
According to local opinion polls, around 75% of Luxembourg's residents oppose growing or selling genetically modified food. (item 2)
Today's demonstration against patents on life is reckoned to be the biggest so far in Europe. (item 4)
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1.EU to 'reflect' on Germany's GM maize ban
EU Business, 15 April
http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/1239807722.48
Environment commissioner Stavros Dimas said Wednesday the European Union would "reflect" on Germany's decision to ban a type of genetically-modified maize produced by US biotech giant Monsanto.
"We will reflect on the issue and we should take the right decision," Dimas said after an informal meeting of EU ministers for the environment in Prague.
On Tuesday, Germany outlawed the cultivation of MON 810 maize the only GM crop permitted until now in the country on environmental and health grounds.
Germany is the sixth EU country to introduce a provisional ban on MON 810, following similar action taken by France, Austria, Hungary, Luxembourg and Greece.
The European Commission sought to force Austria and Hungary to reverse their bans on the crop but its ruling was overturned by a majority of EU nations last month.
A source close to the European Commission told AFP the German ban might bring a revision of the European legislation on GM crops.
Throughout Europe, the public opinion is now against and if the people were asked one more time, "there would be a rejection," the source said on condition of anonymity.
"The spirit has changed, the legislation in a way is operating like an automatic pilot and we have to put some direction in it," the source added.
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2.Luxembourg says no to genetically modified rice
Food Democracy, 16 April 2009
http://fooddemocracy.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/luxembourg-says-no-to-genetically- modified-rice/
In a statement prior to next week's European Council meeting, Luxembourg's Minister for Health, Mars di Bartolomeo, has said that Luxembourg will vote against the proposal to allow genetically modified rice to be made available for sale in the EU.
The proposal concerns specifically Bayer's LL62 genetically-modified (GM) product. Luxembourg's stance is in the same vein as when it opposed the introduction of a GM sweetcorn from Monsanto.
According to local opinion polls, around 75% of Luxembourg's residents oppose growing or selling genetically modified food.
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3.The World From Berlin: 'There Was No Reason to Accept The Risks of GM Corn'
Spiegel Online, 15 April 2009
http://www.congoo.com/news/2009April15/World-Berlin-Reason-Accept-Risks
The German government's decision to ban the cultivation of genetically modified corn has been welcomed by most media commentators in Germany as an overdue step in response to fears that it poses unforeseeable risks. One paper, however, scoffs that "progress has become a dirty word" in Germany.
The news Tuesday that Germany was joining five other European Union countries in banning the cultivation of genetically modified corn met with mixed reactions. Environmentalists were delighted, while supporters of GM foods warned it c ould lead to an exodus of research efforts from the country.
German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner told reporters she had legitimate reasons to believe that MON 810, a GM corn produced by the American biotech giant Monsanto, 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.
German media commentators have broadly welcomed the decision, although they say political factors may well have played a part. Aigner is a member of the conservative Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, and the CSU is keen to tap popular opposition to genetically modified crops in the heavily agricultural Alpine region in the run-up to September's German general election. The center-left Suddeutsche Zeitung writes:
"The ban is a severe defeat for industry and research. Agriculture Minister Aigner is being accused of having taken a purely political decision. There are no serious studies that prove the corn poses a danger, its supporters say. But anyone who uses that argument merely proves that they haven't understood the problem. As long as the crop's usefulness hasn't been established, there is no reason to accept the risks involved in farming it. Aigner had to issue a ban. Anything else would have been a gigantic open-air experiment with unforeseeable consequences."
The left-wing Frankfurter Rundschau writes:
"Genetically modified corn is a risk to our environment, is totally superfluous in farming, represents industrial agriculture, causes pointless costs to food production in Germany and can even ruin beekeepers. All this has been discussed at length. The fact that this has finally led to an official ban is to be welcomed."
The conservative Die Welt writes:
"Progress has become a dirty word, even with the Social Democrats who once defined themselves as a party of progress. Apart from a meek FDP (eds. note: the opposition liberal Free Democrats), no one dares to argue in favor of technical innovation if the activists shout 'fear' loud enough. Just think of all the innovations that have been blown up into bugaboos in recent years mobile phones, PET bottles, PVC window frames, computers, the Internet, the Transrapid magnetic-levitation train, medical gene technology and much else. But in the case of green gene technology, the fearmongers are able to score their biggest triumph since the phase-out of nuclear power.
"They persuaded people that the food we currently eat is completely natural and that nature is always a good thing. But 'conventional' agriculture involves exposing seeds to radioactive rays or making it mutate with the help of poisons. There's nothing natural about these coarse and unfocussed methods. Genetic technology offers, for the first time, the possibility to precisely select a desired gene."
The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:
"The fact that only water fleas and butterflies have been damaged doesn't disprove the warnings about unforeseeable effects. Who knows the extent to which humans may be affected in the long term by something that immediately kills off small creatures?
"Rejecting this type (of GM corn) isn't the pet project of peripheral social groups but is government policy in five EU countries."
The left-wing Berliner Zeitung writes:
"Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner was right to ban the type of GM corn that originated in the US and has been approved in Europe for 11 years. Growing and selling MON 810 is irresponsible because no one can predict the risks to animals, other plants and not least human beings.
"The government did the right thing - but for the wrong reasons, and very late. Countless questions regarding the impact and dangers were unanswered even when Brussels approved MON 810 despite existing doubts and when then-Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer permitted its use in Germany. Consumers and environmentalists protested at the time but were labeled enemies of progress.
"The new studies don't show any new risks - they simply prove that the old warning about the risks was justified. It's a scandal that the subsequent ban was even necessary because the farming of genetically modified plants had been permitted without a thorough examination of all the possible dangers."
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4.Farmers demonstrate in Munich against patents on animals and plants
No Patents on Seeds, 15 April 2009 http://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategor y&id=3&Itemid=28&lang=en
"Stop the patent on the poor creature"
Munich, 15 April. - Over a thousand farmers joined by environment and development-aid organisations today demonstrated against patents on animals and plants in Munich. Over 5,000 people and some 50 organisations have filed a joint opposition to a patent on breeding pigs originally registered by the US agricultural corporation, Monsanto. The No Patents on Life organisation is handing over the objection today at the European Patent Office in Munich.
Those taking part in the protest march, being made under the heading "Stop the patent on the poor creature", are calling for patents on life to be prohibited by law. Greenpeace yesterday presented new research on patent applications authorised by the EPO, showing these now ranged from the breeding of cows to milk. Today's demonstration against patents on life is reckoned to be the biggest so far in Europe.
"Farmers and breeders are dispossessed by patents on life," says Rudolf Buehler from the Schwaebisch Hall farmers? association, which has today led a herd of its traditional breeding pigs to the patent office. "Corporations like Monsanto want control over agriculture and food, from piglets to cutlets." The animals being claimed in the pig patent (EP 1651777) are no different from other breeding pigs. Nor is any new technical invention described in the application. Monsanto has just modified breeding procedures that are already known.
The demonstration is also supported by the German dairy farmers alliance, the BDM, and the AbL farmers' cooperative. "There are new patent applications that range from cows to milk and yoghurt," says Romuald Schaber at the BDM. "The German government must set limits to big companies' greed for living creatures."
The development-aid organisation Misereor fears farmers in developing countries are losing the rights to their own seeds through such patents. Patents on seed further aggravate the global situation for food by making cultivation more expensive.
The demonstrators in Munich have already chalked up an initial success for the independence of agriculture. The Hesse state government and the Greens in the German Bundestag last month called for a change in European patent laws prohibiting such patents being granted in future.