Engineering our welfare

Sandy Myhre speaks to a Far North farmer who is adamant New Zealand remain GE-free.

Drive north from Kawakawa and at Bulls Gorge a sign on your right says Kerikeri Organic. A long driveway takes you to the home and farm of Marty Robinson who dedicates his life to providing vegetables the natural way, without introducing alien chemicals into the soil or on to the produce he sells at the farm gate and local farmers' markets.

Around the Far North - indeed around the world - there are many such farmers and home growers who heartily agree that splashing produce with chemicals is a disgusting process bad for the health of the body and ruinous to the environment. But wait there's more. There's that thing called genetic engineering and to Marty, modifying organisms in the laboratory for the so-called betterment of our society is about as natural as Dolly Parton's, um, hair.

He wants to see New Zealand remain GE-free and is adamant the genetic engineering of anything in the open is a sure road to disaster for the country. He's no dreamy sandal-wearer living the alternative life-style. As a member of GE-Free Northland and as a businessman he's done his homework on the potential threat GE modification poses and can tell you horror stories of GE going disastrously wrong under "acceptable" management practices in places like India, Mexico, Australia or any one of half a dozen more regions of the world. But neither is he as rigid in his outlook as a vegan at a Buddhist retreat.

"I'm not against proper and competent use of biotechnology. But I am against genetically modified organisms in our food and the environment because the short-term gain may become ash in the mouth if we don't get the balance right."

This month he and many other similarly concerned citizens will be making cross submissions to the Regional Policy Statement (RPS) review process. The hearing process in front of three Commissioners is planned to commence in early May, following which the Commissioners will make recommendations to the Nothland Regional Council to potentially implement resource policy for the region.

Only one of the trio of independent commissioners conducting the hearings lives anywhere near Northland. Dave Serjeant lives on the Kaipara Harbour coast. The Chairman, Alan Watson, is from Auckland and Brent Cowie is based in Canterbury. The NRC says between them they have 80 years resource management experience but what bothers Marty Robinson is not where they come from but what the priorities are regarding the four cornerstones of the RPS process - the economy, the environment, cultural and social aspects.

"The final conclusions might be driven in the back room by business interests and we could find that some constraints covering the regulations that currently protect the environment could be removed," he says.

That may already be happening. Laboratory work preparatory to releasing a GE rye grass crop has already commenced which, should it go ahead, could infiltrate the food chain. Moreover, a deal is currently being negotiated between New Zealand and the United States for mutual recognition of food safety regimes. The USA has a more relaxed attitude towards GE than New Zealand and the signing of this agreement is seen as potentially pressuring New Zealand to loosen up its own stricter laws on genetic modification in order, longer term, to facilitate the signing of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement. In other words New Zealand could buckle under pressure from the USA for short-term profit.

Debbie Swanwick, spokesperson for Soil & Health Organic NZ, says the catch cry of GE advocates is to feed the world but she believes GE won't deliver on the promise.

"We can feed the world now. Forty per cent of all food is wasted. Nor does GE increase production or revenue for farmers. It improves the profits for big agri-tech companies based offshore."

What her organisation and many people like Marty Robinson would like to see is Northland declared totally GE-free. A precedent - concerning another issue but the same in principle - already exists on a national level. This country has been a nuclear-free zone for 26 years and still is but whether we're brave enough north of the Brynderwyns to take such a stance on genetically engineered organisms remains to be seen.