Within a time span of two weeks, Ilse Aigner, Germany's conservative agriculture minister, made two seemingly incompatible decisions. In the middle of the April, she banned the cultivation of the genetically manipulated MON810 maize, applied for by Monsanto. Only two weeks later, she decided in favor of BASF Plant Science Company's application to cultivate the GM potato Amflora.
While the first decision was unsurprisingly celebrated by Green politicians and environment activists as a positive breakthrough in a decade-long struggle against GM Plants, and responded by Monsanto in its legal action against the ban, the second decision caused the opposite unsurprising reactions. Interestingly enough the director of Government and Public Affairs for Monsanto‘s German subsidiary commented on the potato-decision by saying, “We are pleased for BASF and farmers that test cultivation of Amflora potatoes was approved.”
Might this be an expression of solidarity between competing companies? The reality is that Monsanto collaborates with BASF on crop research and in March announced regulatory submissions in the U.S. and Canada for the ’world‘s first biotech drought-tolerant corn product,’ co-developed with BASF. So, how to interpret these facts?
While the main argument concerning maize centers the abolition of famine, in the case of GM potatoes it is only the industrial use for producing amylopectin, a starch used to make glossy paper coatings, clothing finishes and adhesive cement that matters. The Amflora potato tastes and smells terrible, so GM proponents argue it will never be used in food or animal feed.
The first line of reasoning emphasizes the benefits for mankind, which even from an ethical viewpoint should make us feel compelled to accept the imaginable “though highly improbable” residual risks. Ethical considerations do not matter so much in the second line of reasoning that maintains, “The Amflora potato has no seeds, and no wild relatives to cross with in Europe” and as a result, alleges that there is simply no risk at all.
Experience from Germany in the last years show in contrast, however, that GM potatoes cannot be kept under control and they cannot be cleared off the field completely. In summer 2008, despite repeated controls, Amflora potatoes are still growing on the field. Consequently the maize now “officially” growing on the former Amflora fields is not allowed to be used as animal feed, because it is contaminated with a GMO that is not approved as animal feed.
BASF, in order to get the approval for Amflora, agreed to reduce the field trial area to 20 hectares surrounded by a fence, down from original plans for 155 hectares, and limited it to a single site in eastern Germany instead of several locations scattered throughout the country. Although there is no information available to the public, it is suspected that the benefits for the concessions are broad. If we take the narrow co-operation of Monsanto and BASF on research into account, this opens for the speculation that abandoning the maize trial may be the price for the much more profitable potato.
The political reality of the agriculture minister is extremely difficult, particularly because general elections are upcoming in September. In contrast to the U.S., where the bulk of corn and soy production is genetically manipulated and there is no strong opposition against GM in general, the situation in many European countries is quite different.
The minister will be expected to simultaneously satisfy different, and in part contradictory claims, including those of small farmers that are often worried about GM plants. Thus, similar to the aforementioned deal there is another logic at play, which says that politically the approval in the Amflora case was only possible at the price of banning the MON810 maize.
In somewhat general terms, we can state a dualism that confronts governments in modern democracies. For structural reasons the state is dependent on close cooperation with the strongest business groups and is hence constrained by their interests. On the other hand, the government has to be elected every few years. So for political reasons it has to demonstrate its independence of big business, for example by installing effective control mechanisms.
Such an inner contradiction can only work more or less through fluctuating between political camps. In a constellation such as this, populism seems to be unavoidable and includes in turn the manipulation of the public‘s emotions. By the way, even the repeated claim to “de-emotionalize the debate” is itself an integral part of this form of fighting for power, where citing allegedly objective results of scientific research can legitimize one’s own position.
Defining themselves as “political,” many GM-critical groups and activists are trapped in the same dualism, which is generally valid in the field of politics and feel impelled to use the same weapons. That is, they attempt to manipulate public emotions, as well as abuse the results of scientific research as proof for their position. When both sides provide scientific evidence from experts, the public experiences a standoff.
Instead we should take our and other people‘s concern seriously and proceed from our genuine feelings rather than from some objective and abstract scientificity.
The views presented in this column are the writer’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those of The Hankyoreh.
© 2009 The Hankyoreh Media Company. All rights reserved.
