Anti-biotech groups have continued their destruction in 2009; by the end of May, the German Plant Breeders Association (BDP) already reported six cases of research plot destructions and occupations in Germany, according to a US Department of Agriculture Foreign Agriculture Service (USDA-FAS) GAIN report.
As no commercial cultivation of biotech crops is allowed in Germany, anti-GM activists are concentrating on research fields and research installations. In the most recent case, a research project with 274 apple trees — which were housed in a plastic greenhouse — was destroyed at the Federal Research Institute for Horticulture, the Julius Kuehn Institute near Dresden. In response, the Minister of Agriculture of the State of Sachsen, Lothar Kupfer, put out a press release stating that this action caused a damage of about US $1 million. Kupfer stated that this clearly was an action of hostility against progress, arguing that a number of facts call for support of green biotechnology: bigger yields, improved plant health, and less need for pesticides and fertilizers, all is to the advantage of the environment. Kupfer also pointed out that biotechnology is present in modern life, in different vaccines, in detergents and in many foods. Kupfer called what happened in Dresden a "criminal action — and the perpetrators have to be held accountable to the last cent."
In 2008, BDP reported 26 cases of field destructions and six cases of field occupations. A group of anti-biotech activists also destroyed several bee hives in the neighborhood of a biotech barley field of the University of Giessen. In the late summer of 2008, activists placed metal posts or bottles filled with concrete in biotech corn fields to damage harvesting machinery.
