Kathrin Mendler, a fourth-year agronomy student at Nürtingen-Geislingen University (HfWU), is fighting back. Her university “bowed to pressure from the protest groups and announced that all trials of genetically modified plants would be stopped for the next five years.” She leads a group of students calling for the school to reverse her decision, GMO Safety reports. The story was also reported in NatureNews.
The protesters have destroyed fields almost every year since 1996, when researchers at HfWU first started to study transgenic crops. One of the biggest arguments against genetic engineering is that it is untested. The students at HfWU worry that the only research on genetic engineering will be conducted by big corporations, if they can no longer research at universities. Sadly, the same has been happening in the US. The entire interview with Kathrin can be found below…
Science and emotion
I’ve finished reading Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa. Robert Paarlberg describes the social and political issues that have led to distrust of agricultural science in the developed world, and how this distrust was exported to developing countries. The book is definitely a good read, but seems repetitive at times.
Parrlberg’s tone makes it feel like he is putting down the organic movement while embracing industrial agriculture. This is
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