Monsanto's Uphill GMO Fight in Germany

The U.S. biotech giant enjoys booming sales worldwide for genetically-modified seeds. But in Germany, it's being chased away by a quirky coalition

By Uwe Buse

When Karl Heinz Bablok wants to relax and get away from his job at the BMW plant, he hops on his bike and cycles out to Kaisheim, a quiet town in Germany's southwestern Swabia region. It doesn't take Bablok long to reach his destination, sitting in the middle of a meadow: an apiary, made of rough-cut boards, which he made himself.

Bablok, an amateur beekeeper and skilled handyman, spends much of his free time here, repairing the apiary in the winter and making honey in the summer. The apiary is where Bablok's recharges his batteries, the place he goes to store up the energy he needs for everyday life and for his job at the BMW plant's training workshops. The apiary was supposed to be a very private place—far away from work and, most of all, far away from the public.

But the apiary and the honey he produces there are no longer private. His honey is now at the center of a dispute being staged in German courts, and observed and influenced by both politicians and the media. And it has drawn Bablok, a man who just wanted his peace and quiet, into one of Germany's major ideological debates—a battle that has been waged for years in the courts, in the political arena and in the fields, with words, scientific studies and sometimes fists.

On one side of the battle are the genetic engineering companies, and in particular US corporation Monsanto (MON), the world's largest producer of seeds, which practically holds a monopoly on genetically modified (GM) plants. Monsanto produces the only modified plant approved for use in commercial farming in Germany, a corn variety that is used for animal feed. The primary benefit of the plant, called MON 810, is that it produces a toxin that allows it to fight off one of its enemies, the voracious larvae of a moth.

On the other side stand Monsanto's many adversaries, a heterogeneous alliance that brings together organic farmers, anti-capitalism activists, churches and politicians with the conservative Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats.

The dispute between the two camps revolves around the opportunities and risks involved in green genetic engineering. It's about companies that are playing God and about fundamental questions like: What should man be permitted to do? What can science do? And should we be allowed to do things just because we can? The dispute is also about freedom and its limitations, the freedom to carry out research, and the freedom of consumers, farmers, beekeepers and a corporation. Where does one side's freedom end and the other's begin, and who draws the boundaries?

Honey for the Waste Incinerator

Bablok became part of the controversy because some of his bee colonies were collecting pollen from fields where the Bavarian State Research Center for Agriculture was growing GM corn for research purposes. The bees carried the pollen back to their hives and Bablok, who knew that the GM cornfields were nearby, had samples tested to ensure that his honey was clean. But the laboratory found that up to 7 percent of the pollen was from GM plants. When the case became public, a district court in the Bavarian city of Augsburg ordered Bablok to stop selling, or even giving away, his honey. As a result, he became Germany's first beekeeper who delivered his honey to a waste incineration facility. Now Bablok is suing the Bavarian State Research Center for Agriculture to recover his costs and his lost sales, which he says amount to about €10,000.

The suit is complicated and has already passed through two courts. A third court is due to hear it soon and both sides are seeking a judgment establishing a principle. The case is about more than just Bablok's costs and the purity of German honey. In fact, the future of green genetic engineering in Germany is at stake. A victory for Bablok would further discredit MON 810. In the public's perception, it would transform the plant into a hazard for human beings.

Bablok, sitting in his kitchen, is an easygoing man given to long pauses between sentences.