Lobbyist says seed companies must be liable for GE contamination

10.30am

New Zealand taxpayers should not have to pay for the mistakes of seed companies that import crop seed contaminated with engineered genes, says a critic of genetic engineering outside the laboratory.

"Liability for genetic engineering (GE) contamination must remain with those who import or use GE seed and not be passed on to the taxpayer," said Sustainability Council executive director Simon Terry.

"Liability must follow the 'polluter pays' principal. Otherwise the agents that have the ability to reduce the risk don't have the incentive to get it right," he said.

Mr Terry was commenting on a proposal from a multinational seed company that if the New Zealand public wanted zero tolerance on GE content of seed imports, it should pick up the costs when a company took care, but still discovered engineered genes and had to destroy its crop.

A Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) report issued yesterday found that of 1.8 million hybrid maize plants grown on 25.5ha, fewer than 800 contained engineered gene sequences.

"It is very likely that the source of this seed is due to the presence of very small concentrations of GE seed in the imported parent lines."

But Howard Morris, the Asia, Africa and Australasia regional director for Advanta Seeds, said yesterday liability for the accident should belong to the public, not just with the importing seed company Pacific Seeds Pty Ltd, which is owned by Dutch-owned Advanta.

Where a company had taken extreme care to avoid GE contamination -- as in this case -- there needed to be a mechanism for that cost to be borne by the public of the country that had made the decision to have zero-tolerance.

Unless the New Zealand Government solved the liability issue, less seed would be grown in New Zealand for the northern hemisphere and smaller seed companies would disappear, he said.

Mr Morris said Pacific Seeds' costs from the GE maize debacle were now nearly $500,000 -- including $300,000 for the 33.50 tonnes of maize seed it voluntarily incinerated, and $30,000 collecting the harvested seed for burning.

MAF and Environmental Risk Management Authority (Erma) officials were told on August 28, at a meeting with Pacific Seeds, that for many years the seed industry's regulations had allowed a measure of tolerance, but in the case of GE contamination it was confronted with zero tolerance.

"Pacific Seeds believes that zero tolerance needs to be changed to a more realistic level," minutes of the meeting showed.

The company asked officials what would happen if more maize crops tested positive and there was less maize to feed cattle.

But Mr Terry said today seed importers and growers had the choice not to source seed from the few countries that posed higher risks of GE contamination.

"Taxpayers have no way to influence that choice, and should not be landed with the financial consequences," he said.

Further reading
nzherald.co.nz/ge

GE links

GE glossary