By Claire Bleakley, President GE Free NZ.
With regard to “Circle Aotearoa report highlights NZ’s GE options” (June 4), the Aotearoa Circle report on modern technologies is biased towards minimising the real advantages New Zealand has in leading the world in low-emission food production through existing fit-for-purpose solutions, which are being overlooked by the pressure to adopt a failing and unsustainable genetic technology solution.
The article by Max Salmond of New Zealand Initiative deliberating on liberalising regulation to capture “low hanging fruit” forgets that the cost of patented plants, the increased use of pesticides and water, the contamination of the seed supply, the yield drag and growing pest resistance that plagues the countries that grow genetically engineered (GE) crops have become a serious threat to resilience and sustainability.
Salmond also laments the “trickle” of field trials saying, “New Zealand researchers are working on a cow feed that will reduce the volume of methane emitted by our cows. Incidental benefits will include reducing bloat and internal parasites and improving overall animal productivity.”
The statement is inaccurate and misleading. The ryegrass trials did not start until mid 2019 and finished in 2022. The reason it conducted the trial overseas was because of its United States private partners, Zea Kal and University of Missouri.
Salmond fails to admit that the $25 million, five-year GE ryegrass trials were so poor they failed to yield enough dry matter for the animal feeding trial they aimed to conduct. AgResearch applied to the Australian Office of Gene Technology (OGTR) and then withdrew its application. Salmond also didn’t mention that the National Party GE policy was written in 2019 on the supposition of success and one year before the first year trial results (2020) were available.
The Aotearoa Circle’s report reflects that same bias. In the chapter on New Zealand regulation the report considers that because there have been no field trials sought since 2010, the HSNO Act’s precautionary approach means that there has been an “effective ban”.
This could not be further from the truth. AgResearch and Scion were given a generic approval to develop engineered plants and animals, which meant they could continue to engineer animals and plants without applying to the Environmental Protection Authority each time.
The 13 field trials that have been conducted in New Zealand Crown Research Institutes like Crop and Food, AgResearch and Scion have been a commercial failure. The reasons are the GE plants were riddled with unknown diseases and failed to grow. The GE animals are sterile, suffered from life-threatening deformities and the surrogate mothers had a 0-7% birth rate with many dying within 24 hours of being born. Regardless, AgResearch has moved to genetically engineer sheep and goats with new traits since 2010.
It is the genetic technology that is at fault not the regulations. It is the regulations that have allowed these horrific failures to come to the surface and have protected farmers from the technology bullet that would have plunged them into an economic disaster. How many farmers can survive with a 0-7% animal birth rate? How will animals survive if GE ryegrass cannot yield enough to feed them?
How many horticulturalists can survive when their brassica are infected with an unknown black rot that just disintegrates the stems? How many foresters can survive plantations with disease-stunted trees? All these are the results of the 13 field trials in NZ.
So why is the Aotearoa Circle getting its information from outside Aotearoa when we have the studies here? How will precision fermentation’s one protein compare with the balanced and nutritional goodness of whole milk? It won’t as it will be the one protein will be mixed with synthetic products to make fast foods and ice cream. The milk will still be unavailable to those with milk allergies.
Why was golden rice not looked at? This rice has a low yield that endangers the ability of the Philippines to feed its population. The Darling 58 GE chestnut tree after 12 years developed a yellow exudation and blight, was stunted and had 1000 base pairs missing.
The glaring and selective bias in looking at gene technologies is set to ignore the reality of the dangers and promote a rosy corporate spin that New Zealand needs to lift the blanket and take a good look at the reality.
As countries are grappling with the failures of testing and off-target safety issues that GE has brought we have dodged the bullet and need to promote the excellent quality production our farmers are struggling to maintain. Aotearoa’s biggest export desks want a precautionary approach taken. Many farmers do not want to have an unnatural technology disaster forced upon them.
Regenerative organic systems are climate action and we have mixed pasture grasses and new products like seaweed mixtures that reduce methane greenhouse gas.
