Kristina Sinemus

Kristina Sinemus is founder (in 1998) and CEO of the German-based consultancy company Genius Ltd., which specializes in conceptualization and design of publications and websites for clients from governmental authorities and biotechnology companies. It carried out the development and content of the websites GMO Safety and GMO Compass.

Studies and scientific work

Studied biology, German studies and pedagogics at the universities of Münster and Kassel (Germany). 1991-1995: Scientific assistant at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Technology (ZIT) at the Technical University of Darmstadt (Germany). 1995: PhD graduation on Biological risk analysis of genetically engineered herbicide resistant crops at the TU Darmstadt under Prof. Hans Günter Gassen. 1995-98: Head of the PR working group of the Institute for Biochemistry of the TU Darmstadt.

Membership of commissions and working groups

Member of the JKI (former BBA) working group Monitoring accompanying the cultivation of genetically modified plants in the agroecosystem coordinated by Joachim Schiemann.

Participation in research projects

• Sinemus was responsible for the project Communication management in biological safety research by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), in which research results of BMBF projects on risk assessment of GM crops are published on the website www.gmo-safety.eu. Genius Ltd. runs this website together with Transgen (Gerd Spelsberg) and the TÜV Nord.
• Together with Transgen, Genius maintains the website of the former EU project GMO Compass (www.gmo-compass.org), which also published the results of Joachim Schiemann's EU project BIOSAFENET, and where Genius acts as contact. For both websites Kristina Sinemus is explicitly named. In case of gmo-compass.org the editors describe the site as the work of “independent science journalists”.
• Sinemus represents Genius in the EU's Technology Platform Plants for the Future.

Participation in lobby organisations

Since 1997, Kristina Sinemus organizes the German Gesprächskreis Grüne Gentechnik (GGG, Discussion group Green Biotechnology), a lobby group whose members are not published and which does not give out any information about itself. She is also a member of the Wissenschaftlerkreis Grüne Gentechnik (WGG, Scientist group Green Biotechnolgy) run by Klaus-Dieter Jany and founded among others by Klaus Ammann.

Kristina Sinemus is a board member of International Society for Biosafety Research (ISBR). Through Genius she is member of the EFB, BIO Germany and InnoPlanta. Genius does PR work for Innoplanta and co-organizes its annual Innoplanta forum.

Kristina Sinemus participated in the COP-MOP4 of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in Bonn, 2008 for the Global Industry Coalition, which brings together industry groups such as EuropaBio, BIO (Biotechnology Industry Organisation (US)) and the BioIndustry Association (UK). [1]

Direct and/or indirect participation in GMO approval procedures

• publication of BMBF research results on GMO risk assessment studies on www.gmo-safety.eu
• participation in the JKI working group Monitoring accompanying the cultivation of genetically modified plants in the agroecosystem that developed criteria for post-market monitoring
• numerous clients of Genius, develop GMOs and ask for permits for field trials and/or commercial release
• member of the organisation InnoPlanta that conducted the first trial cultivation (Versuchsanbau) with GM maize MON810 in Germany and that supports its members in the development and cultivation of GMOs.

Genius

Genius GmbH (Ltd) was founded 1998 as a spin-off of the Technical University Darmstadt. Shareholders are Kristina Sinemus, Klaus Minol, Hans Günter Gassen. Kristina Sinemus is CEO, and Klaus Minol is Scientific Head. See main article: Genius.

InnoPlanta

The organisation InnoPlanta e.V. was founded in 2000 as a project of BIO Mitteldeutschland Ltd. One of the founders is Hans Strohmeyer from BIO Mitteldeutschland Ltd., who acted as project coordinator and a head of InnoPlanta's office. It's loacted in Gatersleben (Saxony-Anhalt, Germany) where the German seed bank is also located. Its aim is to give advice for members and to act as agency for funding, PR and “acceptance research” for GM crops.

InnoPlanta affiliates

InnoPlanta has about 93 members and about 60 partners in research, business, finances and politics (as of April 2008), among which are KWS, NovoPlant, SunGene and TraitGenetics (Gatersleben), BIO Mitteldeutschland, Genius, Landesbauernverband Sachsen-Anhalt, Bundesanstalt für Züchtungsforschung an Kulturpflanzen (BAZ Quedlinburg, now JKI) and the Institute for Plant Genetics and Crop Research (IPK Gatersleben).

See main article: InnoPlanta.

GMO Safety

German version: www.biosicherheit.de The GMO Safety website exists since 2001 and is currently (2004-2010) funded by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) as communication project. gmo-safety.eu mainly exhibits the results of BMBF projects concerning risk analysis of GM crops, the results of the EU project BIOSAFENET (coordinated by Joachim Schiemann) as well as additional news and information. The editorial team consists of staff of the consultancy company Genius (among others Kristina Sinemus, CEO and Klaus Minol, Scientific Head), TransGen's Gerd Spelsberg, and staff from TÜV Nord. All three companies/organisation are more or less explicitly in favour of GM crops. For example Genius and TÜV Nord are both members of the German branch of the international biotech lobby organisation BIO, Bio Deutschland. TÜV Nord is an international company that among other services and test on safety issues, offers services for the supervision of genetic engineering laboratories and environmental releases of GMOs as well as support in the planning and conduction of environmental releases and post-market monitoring. It provides training courses for the safety experts required by law in every GE lab.

GMO Compass

The GMO Compass website gmo-compass.org is maintained by the consultancy company Genius and TransGen, who together also maintain the website gmo-safety.eu. The site was funded in 2005-07 as EU project GMO-Compass - GMO Communication and safety evaluation platform with 460.000 Euro [2] Afterwards funding was first resumed in 2007 by EuropBio and in 2007/08 by the German Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (BMELV). [3] As of 2009 there is no information about the source of funding. The website is build mainly on the German website www.transgeen.de which has been financed since 1997 from a range of different sources including ministries and local authorities, the biotech industry and InnoPlanta. [4] Among the members of the advisory board of the GMO-compass project were Joachim Schiemann and representatives of BEUC and EuropaBio.

TransGen

The organisation Transgen Science Communication was set up 1997 by the German Consumer Iniative. Main editor and project leader is Gerd Spelsberg. TransGen is mainly active as editors for the websites gmo-safety.eu, gmo-compass.org and transgen.de

funding

Despite its apparent proximity to a consumer organisation, TransGen has been financed by a wide range of different sources: Ministry for Environment and Consumers in North-Rhine-Westfalia (Germany; 1997), University of Hagen (1997/98), Labour Union NGG (1998/99), the food producers lobby organisation BLL (1998-2000, 2002/03 and 2007), Ministry for Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture (1999/2000, 2002), Environmental Agency (UBA, 2000, 2002), biotech industries (Bayer Crop Science, BASF, Dow Agro Sciences, Monsanto Agra, DuPont/Pioneer Hi-Bred, Syngenta Agro; since 2001), FibL (2004), DIALOGIK (2004) and InnoPlanta (2004/05). Through GMO Compass, Transgen was also financed by the EU (2005-07), EuropaBio (2007) and the BMELV (2007/08).

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