An exciting time begins.
Even before the event began the atmosphere was excellent among the 140 invited guests from different journalistic and subject-specific areas. The twelve nominated candidates were very excited, as nobody knew who would be the winner of the evening. The award ceremony was opened by Salus managing director Dr. Florian Block.
This year for the first time German presenter Janine Steeger was the host for the evening. The laudators Mascha Kauka, Dr. Katharina Reuter, Valentin Thurn, Dr. Karl von Koerber and Christoph Hofstetter (managing director der Salus Pharma) gave interesting reports about the winners' journalistic achievements and complimented on their meaningful and well-founded work. They also pointed out how difficult it was to determine a winner among the 70 applications.
Due to the outstanding quality of the contributions the first prize was split. Dr. Tanja Busse from WDR (German broadcasting corporation) with her contribution "Landwirtschaft und ihre Folgen" (Agriculture and its consequences) as well as Dr. Ute Scheub together with Stefan Schwarzer for their book "Die Humusrevolution" (The humus revolution) shared this prize. The prize for young journalists was awarded by Mascha Kauka, former publisher and founder of the foundation AMAZONICA, to the journalists Johannes Gerding and Caspar Schlenk for their series of articles "Bio am Limit" (Bio at the limit). Dr. Katharina Reuter, managing director of UnternehmensGrün e.V., held the laudation for the winners of the special prize Monika Götze and Marcus Franken with their book "Einfach öko" (Simply eco).
Last but not least the managing director of Salus Pharma, Christoph Hofstetter, announced the Otto Greither special prize, awarding it to Bertram Verhaag for his great film "Code of Survival – Die Geschichte vom Ende der Gentechnik" (The story of the end of genetic engineering).
Since 2010 Salus honours critical journalistic reports about the negative consequences of genetic engineering in agriculture or about the chances of ecological agriculture without genetic engineering for environment and humankind.