Leading scientists say our GM regulations haven't kept pace with game-changing advances like gene editing. Photo / 123RF
Leading scientists say our GM regulations haven't kept pace with game-changing advances like gene editing. Photo / 123RF
It’s been a political hot potato for two decades – and now an election pledge by National to reform our tight regulations has put genetic modification back into the headlines once more. Science reporter Jamie Morton explains the bigger picture.
What’s the background?
Genetic modification has been a vexed subject in New Zealand since the controversy that swirled around the Royal Commission of Inquiry and “Corngate” scandal 20 years ago.
That’s even after our peak science body, two chief scientists and the Productivity Commission have all concluded our laws need to catch up with technology.
Over the past two decades, our regulations around GM have generally kept to a “proceed-with-caution” approach set by the Royal Commission.
They’re controlled under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (HSNO) Act, which has aged around a time-stamped list of genetic tools, leaving legal and scientific definitions increasingly misaligned.
In the time the HSNO Act has governed GM, we’ve seen the advent of gene editing tools like Crispr Cas-9 – whereby organisms can be tweaked without needing to introduce material from others and often described by scientists as an entirely different technology.
In 2018, the Ministry for the Environment advised our regulations were growing tough to enforce, particularly after a 2014 court decision effectively ensured gene editing stayed just as controlled as earlier techniques.
Meanwhile, concern has been growing that our regulations have been keeping us behind the rest of the world – and our former chief scientist has warned New Zealand risked becoming a “biotech backwater” if it didn’t regularly review new tech.
We’ve heard talk over the last few days of a long-standing “ban” on GM.
Regulators – and groups that want to retain the status quo - would argue there’s no such prohibition, and the onus is rather on scientists to meet the criteria of the HSNO Act.
Yet, it’s been more than a decade since our Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) last received an application for GMO field tests.
In most cases, research involving gene-editing and GM has been restricted to highly-contained environments like laboratories.
In tightly controlled trials, Plant and Food Research has used genetic tech in crop breeding programmes to pinpoint certain functions but hasn’t developed any GM foods for commercial use.
At AgResearch, scientists have been looking at whether gene editing might unlock a pathway in white clover leading to specific compounds that might also help cut methane and nitrogen pollution.
There’s the prospect of “climate-smart” cattle – gene-edited to tolerate warmer temperatures and perhaps produce fewer emissions – as well as transgenic goats that might aid new cancer therapies.
While AgResearch has also been looking at whether GM high metabolisable energy ryegrass can help slash methane emissions and nitrogen losses, it’s turned overseas to carry out field trials.
Similarly, Rotorua-based Scion has had to look overseas to progress its decades-long history of GM research in trees with outdoor trials.
Government-funded studies have been exploring whether gene editing techniques might be used to knock down possum populations, or deal with the destructive European paper wasp.
But these exercises are a long way from the tech actually being used in our environment.
What about GM food and medicines?
As is often pointed out, our supermarkets are full of imported processed foods that contain GM ingredients and must be labelled accordingly.
While shoppers can now buy Impossible Foods’ plant-based patty (containing a GM soy protein and another ingredient made from GM yeast designed to give it a trick-meat taste) our shelves are virtually bare of actual GM fruit, veggies and meat.
The Impossible Burger. Photo / Supplied
These products are regulated under the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code, which has also been tested by new tech.
Food Standards Australia New Zealand, which has been carrying out its own review, has already approved a range of GM crop varieties for use in foods, including types of soybeans, rice, corn, potatoes and canola.
There are also few examples of gene therapy available in New Zealand, which is regulated under the soon-to-be-replaced Medicines Act.
But there have been two recent exceptions that represent the rare uncontrolled release of GMOs in New Zealand – and which scientists have cited as a milestone in progress toward reform.
In the latest case, regulators approved Carvykti: a new treatment in which a patient’s immune cells are taken and genetically modified to create cancer-killing Car-T cells, before being reinserted to become living drugs, much like a vaccine.
Where has the Government shown interest in reform?
To date, the Government has shown scant interest in reforming regulations to allow for GE crops – let alone unleashing gene tech on our pest populations.
Rather, it’s been within that biomedical space that the Government has signalled potential for some regulatory reform – and officials have been looking at whether our regime should be focused more on risk than the tech involved.
That work is yet to be complete, but in recent days, something else has forced the Government to take another look at the space.
That was National’s Judith Collins announcing a new plan that would create a dedicated regulator for the technology, and streamline approvals for trials and use of non-GE or GM biotechnologies.
Collins, the party’s science, innovation, and technology spokeswoman, said the rules would bring New Zealand into line with jurisdictions like Australia and many European countries.
Also eager for reform is Act, whose spokeswoman (and formerly National’s) Dr Parmjeet Parmar said a law change was “desperately needed to ensure we can make scientific advancements while having a clearly regulated framework that mitigates risk”.
Responding to National’s announcement, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins told reporters “I don’t think we should go ploughing into that without careful consideration”.
The Prime Minister’s chief science advisor, Professor Dame Juliet Gerrard, is meanwhile preparing an update to her earlier 2019 briefing to Jacinda Ardern, which laid out some of the practical issues that scientists were facing.
What’s the public appetite for reform?
Surveys to date suggest GM is still a divisive issue among Kiwis – even though the science has advanced heavily since the furore of the early 2000s.
About a third of people polled in a 2019 Stuff survey thought GM food shouldn’t be sold here – and a similar proportion of respondents in a Research First survey gave initial support for gene editing in food production.
Nearly half agreed they’d have concerns about buying GM fruit and veggies or even buying products from animals that’d eaten gene-edited food.
When a separate research team investigated specific views toward using gene drives in pest control, they found support among only about 32 per cent of some 8200 respondents, who appeared much more comfortable with pest-specific toxins.
Other researchers who canvassed views among Māori found most supported gene editing’s use against diseases rather than “cosmetic” health applications, or for conservation over agriculture.
Asked if he thought that major reform would be met with a backlash of the scale seen 20 years ago, former chief science advisor Professor Sir Peter Gluckman felt that times had changed.
Professor Sir Peter Gluckman. Photo / Supplied
“Judging from where we are and other discussions that I’ve had in the past, my gut feeling is nobody sees this as the issue that it was.”
Gluckman partly blamed the controversy two decades ago on “disinformation” - but he also acknowledged that the technology was considered complex and had been difficult for those not involved in it to understand.
As well, he added, New Zealand wasn’t the only country that was hesitant toward GM at the time.
“So, it wasn’t that we stood out as an oddball. But what we did – which is a fundamental error which should not be made – is that we regulated the technology, rather than the use of the technology,” he said.
“What’s happened since then, is many countries have come to understand these technologies are, in general, very safe, and have real value.”
What are the counter-arguments?
Groups opposed to releasing GMOs into our environment maintain this could cause irreversible ecological impacts – and that it could hurt our GM-free trade status.
That latter concern has been cited by Hipkins and Environment Minister David Parker – and dairy giant Fonterra is among exporters who’ve touted their non-GMO products.
John Caradus, of AgResearch-owned Grasslanz Technology, has argued to the contrary.
A paper he published last year noted how our top trading partner, China - which annually imports some $17b of our goods like dairy, meat, wood, flour and starch – was also a big importer of food products from Australia, despite our neighbour’s looser GM laws.
The nation of 1.4 billion remained the world’s biggest buyer of soybeans, mainly for animal feed, and much of which came from GM-variety crops in the US and South America.
Yet Labour’s environment spokesman David Parker told the Herald last year that neither side of the debate had convincingly answered whether changing our GM status would hurt exports – and he questioned whether New Zealand didn’t have one global brand at stake, but several.
Ryegrasses aimed at reduced methane have been developed by Kiwi scientists but not tested in New Zealand. Photo / Ross Setford
University of Canterbury geneticist Professor Jack Heineman has repeatedly argued in favour of keeping our current stance on gene editing tech, which he said was “still developing”.
“The existing New Zealand approach allows regulators to consider the impacts of GMOs on food producers and the wider economy and environment,” he said.
“It protects the country from releases that could result in market rejection and reputational damage.”
Increasingly, many other scientists – Gerrard among them - have called for change they argue is well past due.
University of Auckland professor of biological sciences Andrew Allan said that a relaxing of rules should come with case-by-case assessments, as to whether an edited organism provides a measurable benefit, without an increased risk.
“With a change in the law, overseas markets will continue to receive New Zealand products labelled GMO-free and new products labelled appropriate to that product,” he said.
“Having an edited crop in New Zealand does not taint all New Zealand products.”
Allan believed Kiwis would react to such a change as they did to any other new or novel advance.
“Many will want the novel item... many will follow these adopters, and some will be worried and refuse,” he said.
Otago University bioethics lecturer Josephine Johnston similarly cautioned against taking a blanket, “good-or-bad” approach to the GMO discussion.
“A balanced and nuanced public discussion is required so that we can work towards assessing each specific application carefully on its own merits and in light of our nation’s unique environment and culture.”
