When plant geneticist Teemu Teeri stumbled upon orange petunias at a Helsinki train station in 2015, he couldn’t have known his discovery would set off an international operation to destroy thousands of risk-free garden plants.
Teeri was drawn to the flowers because of their unusual color. Petunias can bloom in white, red, pink, magenta, violet, purple, or blue. But because the plant lacks a certain enzyme activity, it can’t produce the color orange. Teeri noticed the aberration at once and started searching for more orange petunias, online and in the real world.
A strain of petunias with an orange hue was first developed in 1987 by Peter Meyer and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne. They introduced the maize gene A1 into a petunia, enabling it to produce the orange hue. After the original tests, published in Nature, they wanted to see how genes jump, using the color as a signal. On May 14, 1990, the first-ever open-field trial with genetically modified plants in Germany began when the team from Cologne planted more than 30,000 genetically modified petunias.
Opposition to genetic technology was heated at the time. A few hundred people from an initiative called Citizens Watching Petunias (BürgerInnen beobachten Petunien) and other organizations protested in front of the Max Planck Institute. Shortly after, the first German federal law regulating gene technology and trials with genetically modified plants was passed, and new trials became much harder to approve. Others tried to breed and commercialize orange strains of petunias, but in the end, none reached the market – no E.U. authorization procedure was completed – and Peter Meyer nearly forgot about it.
But Teemu Teeri remembered Meyer’s studies and, in 2015, found the flowers and tested them to see whether they, too, were modified using the maize gene. Two strains of orange petunias turned out to be modified. It is still unclear, however, how exactly they are linked to the Cologne studies, as later experiments showed they do not stem from the 1990 open-field experiment but carry the genetic signature of the 1987 study.
After noticing those genetic modifications, Teeri spoke with a former doctoral student who was, by then, working for the Finnish regulatory body responsible for gene technology. This marked the start of frenzied activity by regulatory bodies worldwide. As it was, no permit was given to import, produce, or sell genetically modified petunias – not even when only their color changed. The Finnish food authority Evira issued an order to remove eight strains of petunias from the market and informed the European Union.
Meanwhile, German and Dutch scientific advisory committees, ZKBS and COGEM, both announced that the the garden plants with altered colors posed no relevant risk to humans or the environment. That didn’t save them, though. All over Europe, in Germany, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, orange-colored petunias were ordered to be destroyed. The U.S. followed suit and ordered at least nine strains of petunias to be taken off the market.
What happened after this worldwide petunia carnage is somewhat telling. Within a few years, the American government deregulated the flowers, allowing for genetically modified petunias to be produced and sold in the U.S. In the E.U., however, genetically modified petunias remain illegal. As of July 2028, plants created using gene editing whose changes could have resulted from conventional breeding will be treated like conventional plants. The orange petunias with the maize gene, of course, are not covered by that.
Given this record, it’s fair to say that European regulation of genetically modified plants is not oriented toward efficient risk management. Instead, it represents a more principled view of genetic modification, especially when it comes to food. In 2010, 70% of Europeans were of the opinion that genetically modified food was fundamentally unnatural. In a study published in 2025, 87.5% of French and 80.5% of German participants opposed genetically modifying food. Of those, 93.1% of the French and 87.4% of the Germans answered that genetically engineered food “should be prohibited no matter how great the benefits and minor the risks from allowing it.”
That fits the pattern: When Christian Dürnberger, in 2019, studied 32 position papers by German-language anti-gene-technology advocacy groups, he found that, while the papers made some arguments concerning the risks and social aspects of genetic engineering, they included many arguments focusing on the relationship between humans and nature.
Dürnberger identifies a few conceptions of nature, four of which I notice time and time again in debates about genetically modified food. Many who oppose gene technology speak of the dignity of nature or of plants. They use the morality that conventionally applies to humans or, sometimes, to animals, and extend it to plants, rocks, or the earth itself. Others see nature as creation, either in a religious or secular conception. Both versions imply that humans should not meddle with nature. A third vision is one of nature as “oeconomia naturae,” as Dürnberger puts it, following Groh: “nature is good, harmonious and optimally equipped for the benefit of man”.
And then there is the image of nature as fragile, which makes any human intervention, no matter how small, potentially fatal to nature. (And yet, in some pamphlets that Dürnberger analyzes, anti-GMO advocates claim that if humanity goes too far, nature strikes back.)
All those visions of nature are relevant when we want to understand why many Europeans oppose gene technology, especially when it comes to the food they eat. It’s not about risk; many Europeans distrust gene technology because of their worldview, their Weltanschauung.
That’s a problem for progress. Because progress for our food could mean more nutrition, less land needed, fewer crops lost to drought or pests. It could mean solving malnutrition and reducing our food production’s CO2 footprint. And those are just the defensive innovations. We could also create amazing new flavors or incredibly healthy staples. But not without gene technology.
That is why culture matters for a European movement toward progress. We shun technological developments that would improve food production because many believe it is not proper for humans to meddle with nature.
Culture matters not only when it comes to GMOs and the European concept of nature. It also sits upstream of degrowth, the precautionary principle, privacy, and AI: Culture shapes how Europeans approach the future in many ways. By culture I mean a set of beliefs and ideas and emotional valences shared as common sense or at least as a frame of reference.
Behind modern movements against new technology stands an older European guard: the Romantics, German and French philosophy, the Conservative Revolutionaries, as well as the Christian churches and their interpretation of God’s creation. Many of these ideas originated in Europe and have shaped European cultures for decades, some for centuries.
That means a European progress movement needs to care about culture. The anglophone progress movement knows this, as demonstrated by the work of Virginia Postrel and Jason Crawford. Even what one could call the founding essay of the movement, Collison and Cowen’s “We Need a New Science of Progress,” lists “cultures” among the things Progress Studies should study. But Europe cannot simply import American answers.
While Europeans have been greatly influenced over the past few decades by American and British debates, the French still read more French philosophers and the Germans more German ones. Their histories have been closely intertwined for centuries, and the attitudes that have captured European minds are specific, not only because Europe is the continent of those who didn’t leave for the Americas. It is worthwhile to trace those cultural assumptions, those ideas and concepts, to their roots: the Romantics, German and French philosophers, the Greens, the reactionaries, the churches. Then try to shift Europe’s culture, centimeter by centimeter, toward a culture of progress.
