By Quirin Schiermeier
Scientists have decried the decision by two German universities to pull
the plug on field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops, calling it
a ?disgraceful? interference with scientists' freedom to research.
?I am not happy at all with this decision,? says Stefan Hormuth,
president of the Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Hesse.
?Unfortunately, we were no longer able to deal with the massive
opposition from politicians and the general public. The university has a
reputation in the region that we cannot risk losing.?

Last month, the university announced that it would stop its planned
cultivation of insect-resistant GM maize in nearby Gross-Gerau after
activists occupied the 1,500-square-metre field. Another local field
trial of GM maize, in Rauischholzhausen, was also stopped because of
massive protests from the public and local politicians. Both trials had
been approved by the national consumer protection and food safety body
(BVL) and were to be conducted on behalf of Germany's authority for
agriculture variety and seed affairs.

Earlier in April, the rector and external advisory board of
Nürtingen-Geislingen University in Baden-Württemberg ?urgently
recommended? that a faculty member stop his field trials on
insect-resistant and fungal-resistant GM maize. The experiments, which
were also approved by the BVL, had been going on since 1996. ?We have
always been very critical of this kind of research,? says economist
Werner Ziegler, the university's rector. ?Lately things got out of
control. There were e-mail attacks, vandalism, intimidation and personal
threats. People started calling us 'Monsanto University'.?

The final straw, Ziegler says, was when the local population brought
food and blankets to activists occupying the university's Oberboihingen
test site. Local media and supporters hailed the illegal action as a
brave act of civil inconvenience.

The university's experiments were led by Andreas Schier, who studies
fungal toxins in maize. Although legally the university could not have
forced him to stop the field trials, he says he eventually gave in
because the pressure on him had become too great. ?Scientifically, there
was no reason whatsoever to discontinue the experiments,? Schier says.
?But scientific arguments don't count in a climate of mass hysteria.?

Schier claims that Ziegler and members of the advisory board threatened
to publicly distance themselves from him and his research if he were to
continue. ?I couldn't stand the pressure any more,? he says.

The incidents reveal a new level of public hostility to plant genetic
engineering in Germany, says Heinz Saedler, a director at the Max Planck
Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, which this year is not
cultivating GM crops either. ?It is a very sad thing that some
universities here haven't got the backbone to withstand illegal activism
and public pressure,? he says. ?I honestly don't have much hope left for
the future of academic research on GM crops in Germany.?

?If it is indeed true that universities in Germany hinder faculty
members from doing field research on GM crops for fear of being
vandalized by anti-GM activists, then this is disgraceful,? says Vivian
Moses, a visiting professor of biotechnology at King's College London.


Vandalism and the destruction of GM crops have been common in Germany
and elsewhere in Europe since field trials began 20 years ago. As a
result, academic research in the field is becoming scarcer. Germany
hosts around a third of the European field trials this year, on an area
of just 30 hectares. Europe's GM crop-cultivation research is almost
negligible compared with that in the United States, Brazil and Canada.

?Work in the field is no longer appreciated because there is a
perception that commercially it doesn't lead anywhere, at least in the
short term,? says Moses. ?We need to face up to reality: is the global
food crisis upon us, and must we take action, or will Europe continue to
act as an ostrich, doing its best to ignore modern agricultural
technology??

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