Editorial: Reason gives way to fear

Nothing is so potentially damaging to a Government as an allegation that it covered up an incident of abiding public interest. And nothing is as likely to ramp up the emotion quotient as the involvement of genetic modification. Put the two together, as activist Nicky Hager has done, and the Government finds itself in an arena that owes more to fear than rational thought.

Mr Hager alleges it knew that genetically modified corn had been planted accidentally but kept it from the public. Presumably, he would have wanted concern about the corn made known as soon as initial testing suggested GM contamination. Thus, there would have been a state of high alert, similar perhaps to when an outbreak of foot and mouth disease is suspected. New Zealand's GM-free image would certainly have been tarnished. And all for nothing because the corn eventually proved to be uncontaminated.

Mr Hager alleges further that the Government, after initially deciding the crops must be destroyed, bowed to business pressure and innocuously created a new threshold that said 0.5 per cent of any corn seed imports could be genetically modified. Dispensing with zero tolerance was, he suggests, a convenient way around a difficult problem. Certainly, this problem created dissension among Government agencies. Some officials, indeed, suggested that a statistical tolerance of GM should be adopted. That never happened.

It is in the light of the vigorous debate among officialdom that a controversial memo from Environmental Risk Management Authority deputy chairman Oliver Sutherland should probably be viewed. He complained that the authority was being sidelined. Yet later he told the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification that the reaction to the discovery of the possible seed contamination had been "swift" and "rigorous". The statements are not necessarily inimical if held up against the outcome of the incident. The policy of zero tolerance was not amended. In the end, the one change was to testing standards, to ensure there could be 99 per cent confidence that contamination did not exceed 0.5 per cent.

Finally, of course, a series of tests found no evidence of GM contamination. This was a false alarm. But did the public still have the right to know of the threat? The answer probably hinges on whether the Government was well-placed to deal with the possible contamination without having to raise undue alarm. The location of the seed was known, as was the nature of the genetic modification and the likelihood that the GM seeds were spread unevenly throughout the shipment. And that contamination, if any, would be extremely minor. These seem reasonable grounds to proceed cautiously with normal testing until a verdict was reached. This was not the exact equivalent of a suspected foot and mouth outbreak in which quarantine arrangements must be put in place. It was an incident in which the dangers inherent in disclosure suggested that the preferable option was a softly, softly approach until threat became reality.

Such, however, is the fear surrounding GM that that strategy invites criticism. It will be said it was good luck, not good management, that the seed turned out to be uncontaminated. Yet satisfaction should be derived from the fact that zero tolerance has resulted subsequently in a shipment of seeds being destroyed because officials were not confident it was not contaminated. And that two other shipments have suffered a similar fate because the companies involved would not submit their product to testing.

This country desperately needs a rational debate on GM. Regrettably, Mr Hager's latest conspiracy theory will achieve the opposite.

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