After years of discussion between governments, scientists, industry and NGO’s the genetically modified potato variety “Amflora” has been approved (by the European Commission) for planting in Europe. The potato is equipped with a special starch mixture minimizing amylose to get more of the industrially important amylopectin, which is used for paper production, e.g.
That’s the basic news – and it’s quite important for Germans, who still eat 36 kilogram (79 pounds) potatoes per year per capita (mostly fresh, not processed in french fries).
Stern.de (Nina Bublitz) wrote a comment on this, with the headline: “Why are we allowed to hate the GM potato”. Hate is a strong word, and in my view not appropriate, but the author does not use the word again in the article, which is well-balanced. The main question raised in the article is, why consumers should be happy about a potato, which does not come with any advantage for them, personally, but with the risk, that normal potatoes might be mixed up with a few of these GM potatoes. The article explains, too, what the risk is: Amflora comes with an antibiotic resistance gene (due to the genetic modification technique), which might be transferred to bacteria pathogenic for humans, making them impossible to treat. Also important: The article is cautious about using numbers distributed by organizations supporting GM crops. Which is not the case with the comment of the Welt, where the reader asks himself, whether the number of 134 million hectar GM-crops is high or low, rising or shrinking? And what does it mean, that “60 percent of all food in a supermarket comes with genetically engineered ingredients”? Where does this number come from? And what about the difference of ingredients made with the help of some biotechnology and transgenic organisms? But the Welt did much better than the Rheinische Post, whose comment obviously lacks any research or biological knowledge basis.
The local newspaper Rheinpfalz (first) and the nationwide Financial Times Deutschland had a piece yesterday, which looked more into the future: There are more GM potatoes to come. First, another amylopectin variety for industrial usage. But “at the end of the year” BASF, the chemistry company from Ludwigshafen, plans to file for approval of the variety “Fortuna”, which is resistant to a common root disease of the plant. Different to Amflora, Fortuna is not restricted to industrial usage but targeted to the regular consumer market. It will reduce pesticide usage but – again – won’t have any advantage for the consumer (see FAZ with the dpa piece here).
The Märkische Allgemeine (published in a rural region of Germany with lots of potato agriculture) asked local starch producers, who said, that they do not want to use the GM potatoes (“We need it like a hole in the head”), because they already use potatoes with high amylopectin concentrations. Interesting, but the authors did not explain, that Amflora contains solely amylopectin and why this is an advantage for the industrial processes.
Zeit.de (Dagny Lüdemann) Q&A-piece with lots of potato history.
Also: IT started in Germany…
Within its science section Zeit.online has a sphere for history, sometimes quite boring, but this piece about the inventor of the computer (from Hellmut Vensky) is interesting and amusing (and I assume it is not a coincidence, that it has been published right at the start of the international computer fair CeBit in Hannover). The article describes Herman Hollerith, a German inventor, who actually got his inspiration for using punch cards to automate the US population census from watching train conductors. He was the one, who first used electricity and a 1/0-code (electricity flow/no flow). His machines and company built the foundation of IBM. An article without quotes and no actual need to be published, but just fun to read for people, who would like to know how the invention of such an incredibly complicated thing on their desktop or lap could get started. (The article did not forget to mention, that Holleriths company and machines helped organizing the Nazi-regime and the holocaust.)
– Sascha Karberg
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