Greens put stamp on controversial GE bill

Legislation dealing with GM controls has itself been modified by a panel of MPs. Political reporter AUDREY YOUNG reports.

The Greens can claim both success and failure in the select committee stages of the controversial election-year bill dealing with the controls over genetically modified organisms.

National and Act can claim complete failure because they oppose the bill, saying it adds unnecessary hurdles to a regime already tough enough for researchers.

The Greens - and the Alliance - tried but failed to extend indefinitely the moratorium on the commercial release of genetically modified organisms.

It came into force voluntarily when the royal commission on GM was set up in 2000.

It will be lifted in October next year, as originally planned in the bill now before Parliament which amends the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996 (referred to as the Hasno Act).

Rules for cleaning up after field trials have also been relaxed by the select committee studying the legislation.

It was argued that the original wording went too far - that it might have required the removal of all soil to a depth of 2m after a field test.

The MPs were persuaded that the material required to be removed should be limited to the organism and any "heritable material" from the organism. The committee has defined heritable material as that which can regenerate itself.

Approvals for development and field trials and setting the conditions for them are in the hands of the Environmental Risk Management Authority (Erma), which was set up under the Hasno Act.

The committee has given Erma discretion to impose further controls at the end of a field trial for the removal of genetic elements.

The Greens claim credit for ensuring that inspection and monitoring after field tests is mandatory, not discretionary.

And they claim ownership of new provisions requiring Erma to consider any effects resulting from the transfer of any genetic elements to other organisms in or around the site. That might not be viewed as great gain for the Greens, given that the committee heard that Erma has already considered such risks in 11 out of 13 applications for field tests "and in all cases has found the risks to be negligible".

Where the Greens can claim success is in having applications for outdoor development work treated by Erma in the same way as field trials.

Development is generally the stage of research before a field test, done to determine whether the organism in question has the desired GM trait.

The example used by the committee was cattle embryos developed in a laboratory and implanted into cows kept in containment in an outdoor field. The cows will give birth to modified cattle whose milk will later be tested for certain desired properties.

The committee was concerned "that the issues and concerns about containment that arise in field tests also arise in development processes where the GM organism is kept in a contained field and not in a contained laboratory". The committee wants the conditions for containment of field tests to apply also to development processes where the organism is kept in outdoor containment.

A late addition to the bill is the proposal to temporarily restrict xenotransplantation (the insertion of living biological material from animals to humans) and germ cell-line genetic procedures (modifying germ-cells to alter genetic characteristics in the early stages of an embryo's development) while policy on these is being developed.

The Minister of Health would be able to approve exemptions. The committee decided that a ban on human cloning is covered by a ban on germ cell-line genetic procedures.

The MPs rejected a bid by the Auckland research company Diatranz for an exemption for its xenotransplantation trials involving the treatment of diabetics with living pig cells to reduce dependence on insulin.

The committee expressed "sympathy with the suffering of diabetics who could be helped or cured by this process".

But most of the MPs were concerned that the procedure might pose unacceptable risks to the general population by introducing previously unknown viruses.

The committee noted that mad-cow disease had been considered to be of minuscule risk to humans until it spread from cows to become the variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and that HIV is believed to have got into humans through the transmission of a monkey virus.

National and Act issued a minority report saying the bill went beyond the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification.

The commission expressed confidence in Erma.

"This bill undermines the confidence that was expressed," the two parties said.

They said the legislation added hurdles to research applications and made no provision for "conditional release" as recommended by the commission.

* The legislation has yet to be given a second reading, pass through its clause-by-clause consideration, be given its third reading and receive the royal assent.

Three views on law change

Jeanette Fitzsimons, Greens co-leader:

"The Greens and the Government are on a collision course because of the Government's plan to allow farming of genetically engineered plants and animals to go ahead next year.

"If the Government wants to campaign through the election on releasing genetic engineering into the environment ... then the Green Party will take them on."

* * *

Pete Hodgson, Minister of Research, Science and Technology:

"Amendments to the law governing use of genetically modified organisms strike the right balance between preserving opportunities in biotechnology and assuring public and environmental safety.

"The Government will be making further changes to the law that will cut compliance costs for approval of low-risk research involving GM organisms, often carried out under highly secure conditions in a laboratory."

* * *

Dr Paul Hutchison, National MP on the committee:

"It's absolutely contrary to the whole concept of focusing on growth in biotechnology.

"This bill has made the hurdles more difficult and signalled a head-in-the-sand approach.

"Many [scientists] are saying it's actually cheaper to get the work done overseas than in New Zealand.

"They just don't bother putting in some of the research applications ... it takes a lot of time, effort and money."

nzherald.co.nz/ge

Report of the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification

GE lessons from Britain

GE links

GE glossary