Middle of April is the deadline: that's when the maize will be sown in Germany, and according to the public register about 3700 hectare will be sown with the GM maize MON810. And the call to agricultural minister Aigner to stop the cultivation is getting louder and louder, especially after the EU environmental ministers - and among them the German minister Gabriel - confirmed the Austrian and Hungarian ban of MON810 in 2 March 2009.
Campact, an environmental NGO, has been following Aigner around for days now to raise the issue. They also got a petition online, but unfortunately that only works for Germany addresses. After Aigner replied at some stage, asking for help in bringing the scientific evidence about MON810, Campact, BUND and BÖWL published another report why it is possible and necessary to stop its cultivation.
Meanwhile Monsanto has finally submitted its MON810 monitoring report for 2008: 31 pages in English that apparently only summarize already existing reports, but doesn't give any information that has anything to do with the actual fields on which MON810 was grown in 2008.

Friends of the Earth published their 2009 copy of their report "who benefits from gm crops?" and that's certainly worth reading (report, summary).
Over the years there has been criticism about the cultivation figures published annually by ISAAA because Clive James repeatedly has refused to give information about where these numbers are coming from while they are continuously refered to as the only available source for GM acreage worldwide. Not surprisingly ISAAA saw an increase in 2008 again, speaking of a "historic milestone"
However, FoE come to a very different conclusion when they reviewed the last ISAAA report as well as figures given by EuropaBio. ISAAA increased the acreage it reports by simply multiplying each hectare by the number of GM traits grown on it. So a hectare of Bt maize is a hectare of GM cultivation, but a hectare of Bt maize with herbicide tolerance adds up to two hectares - at least in the eyes of ISAAA. So if all agricultural land would be grown with triple-stack crops, we suddenly would have three times as much agricultural as before?

A new study from the GenOk Centre for Biosafety in Tromso show a reduced fitness of Daphnia magna fed on Bt maize MON810. Daphnias fed on MON810 had a higher mortality rate, less females reached sexual maturation, and the overall egg production was lower compared to D. magna fed isogenic maize. Since this reduced fitness after feeding on Bt maize coincided with an earlier onset of reproduction, the scientists concluded a toxic effect rather than a lower nutritional value of the GM-maize.
After adverse effects of Bt maize on caddis flies last year, this is no the second study showing possible adverse effects of Bt maize on aquatic organisms. Meanwhile the environmental risk assessment of GM crops in the EU does not include aquatic ecosystems.
Bøhn T, Primicerio R, Hessen DO & Traavik T (2008): Reduced Fitness of Daphnia magna Fed a Bt-Transgenic Maize Variety. Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, DOI 10.1007/s00244-008-9150-5.

Eine Recherche darüber wer mit wem Verbindungen hat in der Entwicklung, der Risikobewertung und der Zulassung von Gv-Pflanzen in Deutschland zeigt, dass viele der involvierten Presonen sehr vielfältige Kontakte habe, darunter auch zu Lobby-Organisationen und zur Gentechnik-Industrie.