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A bungle at the border has let nearly two tonnes of sweet corn seed into the country to be planted even though it is "contaminated" with genetically engineered seeds.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry said today it is investigating how its own quarantine service "inadvertently cleared" two consignments of seed from the United States in October.
A total of 1800kg -- enough to plant 400ha -- "were incorrectly cleared by MAF" even though documentation from the original batches of seeds bulked up for the shipments showed the presence of GE content. Both consignments were accompanied by certificates claiming they had tested negative for GE content.
MAF said any GE content that may have entered New Zealand "is present at extremely low levels". New Zealand law -- the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act -- sets a level of "zero tolerance" for imports of unapproved GE seed in shipments.
The documents accompanying the seeds gave no indication of which altered genes had been put into the seeds, or what production traits were being targeted.
A MAF spokesman said the department was now checking to see where the seeds were sent and how many had been planted for this summer.
"MAF will be working with affected parties to locate all affected material," he said. Matters such as what would be done with plants already being cultivated "will be determined by these discussions".
New Zealand imports about 750 million conventional maize seeds to plant 31,000ha of maize annually.
One inadvertent import of GE seed sparked the "Corngate" political row during the 2002 election campaign.
In 2005, farmers expressed frustration when a big maize consignment was found to be contaminated by GE material -- endangering export markets -- and proposals were made for as much as 13,500 tonnes of maize to be dumped.
They said it was the sixth such incident in the past three years. They have involved genetic material added to seeds to be used as a human or animal food, rather than for production of GE pharmaceuticals.
In 2004, nearly 4000 tonnes of corn grown in Gisborne, Hawke's Bay, Waikato and Northland was found to have traces of GE material.
Today, MAF said it was also investigating its own border clearance procedures "to better understand what happened in this case" and to prevent future occurrences.
The Green Party's spokeswoman on genetic engineering, co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons, said she was "absolutely shocked and angered".
"There is no excuse for this breach -- it is just not good enough," she said. New Zealanders did not want to eat GE corn, and export markets showed no sign of accepting GE foods or foods with GE contamination.
Ms Fitzsimons, who chaired the Parliamentary select committee inquiry into Corngate, said she thought that a robust system to detect and eliminate contaminated seed had been developed.
"It is extremely disturbing to learn that our border is still not secure against GE contaminated seeds," she said. "It is even worse that it has taken two months to discover that."
The two-month delay meant most of the seed was likely to have been planted: "There may be little seed left to test."
A handful of left-over seeds would not provide a representative sample, and the party wanted leaves of the growing plants to be sampled and tested.
"If positive contamination is found, it must be removed and destroyed and the farmers compensated," she said.
Ms Fitzsimons said the bungle could be an indication that too many people in MAF still did not take the issue seriously and there needed to be a major shake-up among the people who constituted the nation's first line of defence.
- NZPA
