Bayer CropScience
Bayer CropScience AG (BCS ) is an independent subsidiary of Bayer AG with headquarters in Monheim am Rhein. As part of the restructuring of Bayer AG, the subgroup was formed in October 2002 from the former plant protection division of Bayer AG and the guarantees given by the Aventis Group in 2001 range Aventis CropScience. Important German production sites are located in Dormagen, in the Industrial Park Höchst ( Frankfurt am Main ) and the Chemical Park Knapsack ( Hürth ). The headquarters for the European business of BCS (EMEA ) is located in Lyon, France.
Bayer CropScience is an agrochemical company, is the world from around 90 companies and is divided operationally into three major areas:
- Crop Protection (CP )
- Environmental Science ( ES)
- Bio Science (BS )
The Crop Protection division represents 80.4 percent share of the total turnover of the company the largest portion of the AG dar. This business area includes the chemical plant protection in the field of agriculture. Environmental Science covers all non-agricultural applications. These include, for example, products for lawn care and various insecticides. Bio Science offers solutions in the field of biotechnology and plant breeding.
In September 2011, the then CEO Sandra Peterson announced to double the spending on green genetic engineering to 400 million euros per year by 2015. Total spending on research and development in the seed sector are expected to rise by 20% to 850 million per year. In conventional crop protection one wants to be separated from older agents, among others should by 2012, all insecticides that are valued by the WHO as particularly harmful, be removed from the program.
Products and consequences
Clothianidin
End of April and beginning of May 2008, there was in some regions in West Germany to a bee deaths, in which about 11,000 people were sometimes considerably damaged. The active ingredient clothianidin, which included among others in seed dressings of Bayer CropScience, was identified as the cause. He was passing through drift of seed at sowing dusts into adjacent plant populations. The authorities suspended the approval neonicotinoid -containing insecticides and then decreed that a higher dressing quality and a reduction in the drift at sowing must be ensured.
Mixing with transgenic rice
2006 Bayer CropScience reported that traces of a transgenic rice variety, which located in the testing phase and not yet approved, was got into the food and feed chain in the United States. This according to the USDA and FDA suffered no health or environmental risks. According to the European Commission traces of rice were found in September 2006 in rice imports from the U.S.. Bayer CropScience was sentenced in March 2011 by a court in Stuttgart ( Arkansas) to pay restitution of $ 136.8 million to Riceland Foods, since the export of conventional rice by Riceland Foods basis of relevant EU requirements had to be stopped.