Topic: FIGHTING IN THE FIELD
Lynann's photo
Fri 03/06/09 09:56 AM
Your honey? You cannot sell it or even give it away?

Did we say your honey? Not if we can help it!

Many of you may know the name Monsanto.

This ag giant is a leader in genetically modified seed among other things. They are involved in a legal battle in Germany that may have future implications for us all.

Monsanto's test corn fields located near a hobbiest bee keepers hives have contributed some pollen (7%) to this gentleman's honey. Monsanto figures that gives them the rights to his honey??

Those thieving bee bastards disrespecting Monsanto's ownership of pollen eh?

This might have been a case of an obscenely large corporation using it's vast resources to bully a small one man ag operation but thankfully the case has drawn the attention of others.

I will post the intro to the article (which is lengthy) and hope others will read and perhaps mull this issue over.

"The core issue revolves around whether Bablok's genetically modified honey is subject to the licensing regulations set down by European Union food law."

But there are other questions as well involving ownership, large ag corporations, and genetically modified crops among other things.

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FIGHTING IN THE FIELD
Monsanto's Uphill Battle in Germany

By Uwe Buse

Business is booming worldwide for US biotech giant Monsanto but in Germany the company has encountered fierce resistance. A colorful alliance of beekeepers, anti-capitalism protestors and conservative politicians are in the process of chasing the global market leader out of the country.

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.

FROM THE MAGAZINE
Find out how you can reprint this DER SPIEGEL article in your publication.
On one side of the battle are the genetic engineering companies, and in particular US corporation Monsanto, 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?

From Der Spiegel on-line english edition:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,611582,00.html