KEY POINTS:
The growers' lobby Horticulture NZ wants a "thorough review" of procedures for importing sweetcorn seed.
HortNZ chief executive Peter Silcock said growers wanted assurances that "robust biosecurity systems" could ensure shipments contaminated with genetically-engineered seeds were not brought into the country.
Biosecurity Minister Jim Anderton said in Parliament on Tuesday that about 4420kg of sweetcorn seed was being investigated for possible GE contamination.
About two-thirds of the seed, 3067.5kg, was planted in the Hawkes Bay, Gisborne, and Mid-Canterbury regions. The remaining 1352.5kg of seed had not been planted and had been "secured".
Mr Silcock said the announcement was a worry.
"Growers have planted this seed in good faith. If the crops are to be destroyed, it will have a big impact on those growers and we will be expecting compensation".
If the growers, on 25 properties, were ordered to destroy their crops soon, they might still have time to replant, he said.
"We would like to see these decisions happen quickly so growers aren't left hanging and can make decisions about the future use of the land," Mr Silcock said.
Sweetcorn is a major horticultural crop, and 5000ha to 6000ha is grown annually.
The crops being investigated total 373.3ha.
Mr Anderton said Biosecurity NZ was consulting growers and seed producers, but it was "almost certain" that the unplanted seeds and the crops which were growing would be destroyed.
And questions were being asked about how the seeds were able to enter the country despite documents accompanying at least two of the consignments showing the parent batches from which the seeds originated had GE-contaminated seed in them.
"The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry is conducting a stringent inquiry," he said. "There will be accountability here."
New Zealand has a "zero-tolerance" policy on GE seed contamination.
Asked by Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons if the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry was trying to implement its preference for a threshold below which GE contamination was legal - an acceptable level of "inadvertent" contamination - Mr Anderton said seed producers claimed they had a system of control that eliminated GE contamination.
"The ministry is rather questioning of that possibility, but that is what the seed producers say," he said.
None of the crops was likely to create any long-term problem as long as the plants were removed before they set seed.
Ms Fitzsimons said any GE seeds in the shipments were unapproved organisms under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act and were illegal under the Biosecurity Act.
"MAF does not have the authority to decide, after 'consultation', to let them mature, flower and seed," she said.
The suspect sweet corn came from the American company Syngenta, which was known as Novartis when it supplied the seeds that caused the 2002 "Corngate" controversy.
It also supplied the seeds which in 2003 led to a Japanese pizza-maker complaining that a topping from New Zealand contained GE-sweetcorn.
- NZPA
