Jul 2, 2004

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Status seminar on biosafety research.

“We want to make ourselves known.”

It was a first: for the first time the annual status seminar on biosafety research took place not amongst an inner circle of scientists but in the public arena. Scientists are increasing their efforts to enter into a dialogue with the public.

Wolf-Michael Catenhusen , State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Education Research, opened the status seminar: “For a proper, objective public discussion and shaping of public opinion on issues of green genetic engineering it is crucial that biosafety research and its findings are made transparent and accessible to the general public.”

Podium discussion: Biosafety research – quo vadis? Green genetic engineering: safety research and how it is perceived by the public. With Jürgen Hampel (University of Stuttgart), Anja Matzk (KWS Saat AG), Volker Stollorz (moderator) and Joachim Schiemann (BBA)

More than 250 participants: The large hall at the Catholic Academy in Berlin was packed.

Diverse research projects: Around 40 working groups presented their projects and their results to date. (Photograph: Genetically modified Bt maize)

Around 300 participants accepted the invitation to the public status seminar on 16 June 2004 at the Catholic Academy in central Berlin. More than 40 project teams presented the results of their work over the past three years.

The general public is largely unaware that the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has been funding safety research projects for more than fifteen years. One of the key topics of discussion in Berlin was how the results of biological safety research can be given more weight in the debate surrounding genetically modified plants. The results of biosafety research are rarely incorporated into political legislation.

Catenhusen: precautionary research. At the opening of the status seminar, State Secretary Wolf Michael Catenhusen announced that safety research on GM plants would continue to be funded in the coming years. The BMBF has already funded 43 projects to the tune of €14.3 million since 2001.

In so doing the federal government is doing its bit to ensure that the potential impacts of genetically modified organisms can be comprehensively and transparently tested and assessed at an early stage on the basis of scientific research, now and in the future.

Gaining public trust: In the podium discussion that followed, Joachim Schiemann (BBA) and Anja Matzk (KWS Saat AG) emphasised the importance of scientifically based data for approval decisions. But simply gathering data and publishing technical articles was no longer enough. “Science has an obligation to inform the public,” stressed Schiemann.

However, if the majority of consumers have little confidence in the safety of GM plants, this is not simply down to insufficient knowledge. With foodstuffs in particular, consumers’ perception of risk differs fundamentally from that of the experts, according to Jürgen Hampel, sociologist at the University of Stuttgart. The risk argument tends to conceal doubts about the benefits of genetically modified food.

Lots of questions? The answers are out there. It is frequently argued in public debate that we do not know enough about genetically modified plants to allow their cultivation. And yet three presentations clearly summarising the findings of countless projects disproved this general statement. Safety research is not just interesting and diverse, it can now provide well-founded scientific answers to many questions concerning the safety of GM plants.