Pete Hodgson: Technology used wisely will boost health, wealth

Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons and Labour's Science Minister Pete Hodgson took part in debate on genetic modification last week. This is an edited extract from that debate.

GM has been around for about 25 years now. Every day in New Zealand, research uses the technology. But no GE or GM organism has been released into the New Zealand environment as a result of this research. However, live GM vaccines exist elsewhere in the world so, strictly speaking, those GM viruses exist in New Zealand, continually introduced by air travellers.

Food containing GM or GE ingredients has been around for about 10 years.

We don't know how common these ingredients are in our food chain, because during the 90s there was no requirement for labelling.

Since last December, all food with GM ingredients must be labelled (with 12 months' grace for stock in trade).

GM food in New Zealand must also comply with international standards set by the World Health Organisation.

In the mid-90s legislation was introduced to set up the regulatory structures for managing genetically modified organisms, in the lab, in contained field tests and in the environment. Regulatory systems had been voluntary, managed by scientists.

The legislation established a body called the Environmental Risk Management Authority, or ERMA. The ERMA handles all aspects of GM research from low-risk to high-risk. It has not yet received any applications for release.

For an application to succeed it must meet three tests.

First, the benefits must exceed risks. Second, if the benefits are high but the risks are significant, then ERMA must decline, even though the benefits exceed the risks. Third, if there is scientific uncertainty, then ERMA can decline for that reason alone.

If the uncertainty is sufficient, ERMA must decline.

In other cases, ERMA might minimise the risks by making the approval conditional.

To date, ERMA has declined no applications because all requests have been for research in containment and have been of a sufficiently high standard.

An irony of this debate is that, as Minister of Science, I hear researchers complaining about the costs and the toughness of ERMA and its legislation at the same time as I hear anti-GM campaigners deriding ERMA as a rubber stamp.

Labour says it would be strange for us to turn our back on GM. We are poised to take advantage of what has been dubbed the biotechnology century, for the benefit of all New Zealanders. We are exceptionally good at growing things, at the science of growing things, and at processing what we grow with skill, efficiency and innovation.

Like the Royal Commission, Labour rejects any unregulated, wholesale use of GM technology and we specifically reject the other extreme of an outright ban.

I want to explain why we do not support the policy the Greens have adopted.

The Greens seem to be wilfully blind to the possibility that many smart uses of genetic modification will offer environmental gains.

Imagine if we can grow GM carrots that, when used as bait, reduce fertility in possums. Imagine producing GM sterile pine trees that don't spread beyond plantation boundaries, don't release pollen into allergic noses and put all their energy into wood production instead of seed production.

Examples such as these are being researched in New Zealand.

Another reason for opposing the Greens' position is that it is riddled with inconsistencies and meaningless slogans. Let's look at three slogans. The first says GE is coming to dinner. The second says GE should be kept in the lab. The third says New Zealand should be GE-free.

The first resonates with people for whom GE is primarily a food issue. They do not like being told GE is coming to dinner. But GE has been coming to dinner, uninvited, for 10 years. Labelling will let people be more discriminating about what is on their plates.

What about the injunction to keep GE "in the lab"? It is harder to contain a virus in a laboratory than to contain a sheep in a paddock.

And what about keeping New Zealand GE-free? Well, New Zealand has not been GE-free for years. Although they rally behind this slogan, even the Greens' support for it is paper-thin.

They don't mind medical uses of GE technology. And Jeanette Fitzsimons has said the Greens would have no problem with the use of GE plants to produce a bait that makes possums sterile.

Field testing seems to be something the Greens can now live with, too.

Extending the moratorium, the Greens' bottom line demand, would enable research in containment - field tests - to continue. The point of field tests is, of course, to answer questions that Jeanette and others legitimately raise.

What happens when you look hard at the Greens' position on GE is that it totters under the weight of its internal contradictions, and the contradictions with its objectives on other crucial environmental issues.

Here's a conclusion. The choice is to use the technology selectively, or to draw a line in the sand that isn't real. It is to proceed with caution and deploy the most precautionary, transparent and participatory regulatory system in the world, or to refuse most uses of a technology that may bring health, economic and environmental benefits if used wisely.

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