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The biotechnology industry, claiming the backing of European Union governments, signaled a new effort to win greater leeway to grow genetically modified crops in Europe, a region where citizens have long been skeptical about the safety and value of the technology.

EU experts deadlocked Monday on whether France and Greece should lift their bans on growing the sole bioengineered seed approved for planting: an insect-resistant corn engineered by Monsanto.

Biotechnology industry executives say that a bigger vote expected next week could lead to two additional engineered corn seeds being given permission to be marketed in the EU by year-end. One is produced by Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a unit of DuPont, with Dow AgroSciences. The other is from Syngenta.

Even so, a variety of forces are pushing Europe into re-examining the potential of gene-altered seeds despite a view among many citizens across the trade bloc that the crops are unsafe, dangerous to the environment and represent an unwelcome incursion by corporations into agriculture.

The problem I always have with issues like this is that it comes down to uneducated “common knowledge” vs. whatever is designed by the latest scientific methodology. The protesters are rarely any different from 19th Century weavers destroying machinery.

I spent a significant chunk of years protesting as a political act, for things, against things – definable and verifiable. That even included science and technology used to anti-human ends by politicians. That’s not what this is about.

Since 1998, the commission has not approved any applications for farming gene-altered crops, and that makes Europe an important test site for whether the biotechnology industry and its supporters can burnish the industry’s image and win the right to begin growing in significant quantities – something it has yet to accomplish despite successes in other parts of the world…

Nathalie Moll, a spokeswoman for the European Association for Bioindustries, or EuropaBio, the main industry group in Europe, said the vote Monday showed new momentum behind moves in Europe to open up the market to gene-altered crops. “More and more member states are following the science as to the safety of these GM products and listening to the voice of their farmers, who are increasingly interested in using new technologies,” she said, referring to genetically modified crops.

Political decisions about science just drive me fracking crazy. I realize they’re necessary – especially to overcome reactionary culture and ignorance. We just struggled through 8 years of know-nothing rulings in the United States over stem cell research. I don’t find the opposition to GM crops any more well-founded in research than Bush League superstition.