BioWorld International Correspondent

MUNICH, Germany - Germany's new law regulating genetically modified plants will require farmers who plant modified crops to make that fact publicly known in a register. They also will have to take precautions to prevent the spread of modified genetic material and assume financial responsibility if neighboring farmers are no longer able to sell their harvest as unmodified.

The law will take effect at the beginning of next year.

Erwin Teufel, governor of Baden-Wuerttemberg, called the law a "de facto prohibition" of agricultural biotechnology. He added that it appeared to be far stricter than the relevant European Union guidelines.

"In the future, Germany will have to import innovative products that are made with the help of genetic technology," Teufel said. He is a member of the opposition CDU party, which voted against the law in the national parliament.

The law passed along a party-line vote, 303-284. As a bill, it had been stalled in the upper house of parliament, which is controlled by the opposition. However, German parliamentary procedure meant that if no version could be agreed on between parliament's upper and lower houses, the majority in the lower house was sufficient to enact the measure.

Renate Kuenast, minister for consumer protection, food and agriculture, said she had no knowledge of genetically modified food being unhealthy or unsafe, but claimed that was not the objective of the law. She said it had been enacted to protect biodiversity, consumers' freedom of choice and growers who feared economic setbacks resulting from the cultivation of genetically modified crops.

The government statement on the law highlighted its effectiveness in preventing a "stealth introduction of green biotechnology."

The new law might run afoul of EU regulations governing genetic technology and free trade. The Berliner Morgenpost reported that it had a letter of warning from the European Commission, which stated that the new law violated general provisions of EU treaties. The letter allegedly said that regulation of the coexistence of conventional and genetically modified agricultural products may not "lead de facto to a complete prohibition of the use of approved genetically modified organisms."

Alexander Mueller, Germany's top civil servant responsible for agriculture, said, "We do not share the commission's objections."

Germany and the commission have a long-running disagreement over genetically modified organisms in agriculture. A five-year moratorium on the organisms ended this summer, but they are at present only imported and not grown. The dispute has led to a case being lodged at the World Trade Organization against the EU by the U.S., Argentina and Canada. A loss at the global level could open Europe to substantial financial penalties in the form of retaliatory tariffs and other measures.

Syngenta AG, an agribusiness company based in Basel, Switzerland, announced it was stopping all field tests of genetically modified plants and seed stocks in Europe. The company had attempted field tests in Germany of methods to fight fungal diseases in wheat, but the destruction of the fields caused Syngenta to abandon the tests.

The company is not abandoning biotechnology, research head David Lawrence told German media, but in Europe public resistance, high regulatory hurdles and the lack of markets led the company to locate all of its biotech research in the United States.

"Europe's skepticism about new technology is causing it lasting damage," he said. "It is in danger of losing all connections with green biotech."