Politician stopped GM studies

Renate Künast, German minister for Agriculture and Consumer Protection, is facing allegations of exerting undue political influence on science this week after it emerged that she instructed government researchers to cancel at least two projects into genetically modified crops. Künast is a member of the Green Party, which forms a coalition government with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Social Democrats. The party strongly opposes agro-biotechnology, arguing that it is unsafe and that risks cannot be properly assessed. On Wednesday (March 9), the German parliamentary opposition is scheduled to put a series of questions to the government about revelations that first came to light on February 18, when the monthly newsletter Laborjournal reported that in September of last year, two researchers had received letters from Künast's office requiring them to stop specific research projects and not comment publicly on them. Joachim Schiemann from the Federal Biological Institute for Agriculture and Forestry and Reinhard Töpfer at the Federal Research Institute for Breeding of Cultivated Plants (BAFZ) had been working on methods to eliminate antibiotic resistance genes from genetically modified potatoes, canola, and wine. When contacted by The Scientist, neither Schiemann nor Töpfer wanted to comment publicly on the controversy, but Jörg Hinrich Hacker, vice president of the German Research Society, told The Scientist that Künast's edict reflected the Green Party's political position on genetically modified crops. "They do not want this technology as a whole," Hacker said. "Any research eliminating the risk would destroy their argument." While government research has always been under political influence, this is the first time that work that has already been granted funding by the research ministry has been subsequently cancelled, Hacker said. Klaus Peter, spokesman for BAFZ, told The Scientist that five such projects in his research institute alone have been abandoned recently—something that had not happened once before in the institute's 13-year history. The other projects are about risk research, he said, but would not give any further details. But Maria-Luise Dittmar, spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Protection, told The Scientist that she knows only about two projects that will not be conducted—those of Schiemann and Töpfer Those projects were stopped because Schiemann and Töpfer wanted to develop a product, she said. "We wanted to prevent them having to assess their own product in a few years," she told The Scientist. But Inge Broer, a scientist at the University of Rostock, who has been working with Schiemann and will now conduct his experiments, says that they wanted to develop a system for eliminating resistance genes, not a specific product. The scientists estimate that the development will take about 15 years. Regardless, Dittmar said, "it is the task of departmental research to cover the government's demand for counseling. It has to serve the will of the department." Germany's science council, the Wissenschaftsrat, has recently criticized the scientific quality of the work conducted in government department institutes and called upon them to enter more into scientific competition for research grants and publications. The science council is a board with representatives from all major scientific organizations and the universities, which makes recommendations for the development of German science. "Renate Künast prevents department institutes from entering into scientific competition," said Hacker. "The policies of the Green Party on green biotechnology are a handicap for science. They are hostile to innovation and research." The German opposition party spokeswoman on research policy, Katherina Reiche, says the incident represents a threat to research freedom. "The Green Party refuses green biotechnology because there is allegedly too little knowledge on the safety of it", she says. "But they want to prevent exactly that knowledge from being created. Their only aim is ideological vote catching."

Politician stopped GM studies

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