United Future
Bernie Ogilvy

New Organisms and Other Matters Bill - Second Reading

As the stated in the Report of the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification, “GM has been used freely in New Zealand for more than a decade as a research tool for medical purposes and for food ingredients.  It holds exciting promise not only for conquering diseases, eliminating pests and contributing to the knowledge economy, but for enhancing the international competitiveness of the primary industry so important to our country’s economic wellbeing”.  This would mean less pesticides, less insecticides, less use of antibiotics in farmed animals such as pigs and poultry, more production per unit of land under cultivation – it all sounds like good environmental and economic sense to me!  However, as I’m sure almost everyone would agree – new technology such as this must be applied cautiously and safely.

The New Organisms and Other Matters bill puts the legislative and regulatory framework in place that will enable United Future to feel comfortable with the lifting of the moratorium on applications for the commercial release of genetically modified organisms.

I would like to reiterate at this point that although United Future is comfortable with the lifting of the moratorium, the moratorium itself is set to lift automatically on 29 October this year.  This was set down in the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Genetically Modified Organisms) Act 2002 for the purpose of giving the Government time to implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification.  This was a sensible step to take – particularly in view of fears among some sectors of the public about the possible consequences of using this new technology – but a further extension of the moratorium cannot in any convincing way be justified.

If the Government did decide to extend the moratorium it would need to introduce a whole new piece of legislation in order to do so and then get it through parliament before the end of October.  While that would be the Government’s – and only the Government’s – perogative, it is our view that in the absence of a PROVEN danger to public health or the environment such a course of action would be a disaster for New Zealand’s scientific community, for the agricultural sector and by implication for the economy and therefore the material wellbeing of society as a whole.  Of course, no such evidence of danger exists and I believe there is therefore only one party in this parliament that would support such a detrimental backward step – and fortunately for New Zealand that party is not the Labour party.

Even in the absence of the New Organisms and Other Matters Bill, the Royal Commission itself found that New Zealand’s basic regulatory framework and key institutions were up to the job of safely addressing the application of GM technology in New Zealand.  (And remember, the Royal Commission’s study is probably one of the most extensive inquiries ever to be undertaken into the application of GM technology anywhere in the world.  Even then - it most certainly did not recommend the imposition of any sort of a moratorium.  But more on that later).

However, in the interests of caution, public safety, environmental protection, and the importance of New Zealand’s “clean green” image for the marketing of our exports, the Royal Commission DID make a series of recommendations that focussed on enhancing the exisiting regulatory framework and institutions still further.  They did not seek to throw everything out and start again or to take drastic steps to bring the existing framework up to some new impossibly high standard.  They simply made suggestions for improvements based on sound science to make an already robust regime even safer.  And that is what this bill is all about.

The New Organisms and Other Matters Bill implements the sensible, moderate recommendations of the Royal Commission so we can be absolutely sure that our regulatory framework and institutions are as good as we can make them before the genetic modification moratorium is lifted in October this year.

Another advantage of this Bill besides its focus on safety is that it also takes other aspects of GM technology into account – such as the workability of the regulations businesses will have to comply with – so that GM technology can be used in practice as well as in theory.  This is important because the economic benefits for our country are potentially huge.

Despite claims to the contrary, there is no concrete evidence that lifting the moratorium in October will harm New Zealand’s exports.  Certainly our exports showed no signs of suffering from the absence of a GE moratorium in the days before start of the moratorium and the Royal Commission process.

United Future continues to hold with the idea that the economic effect of lifting the GE moratorium will be a positive one despite the huge amount of misinformation and sub-standard analysis distributed by the anti-GE lobby in an effort to convince people that the opposite is true.

One commonly cited example of this effort is a survey that reportedly demonstrates that a large proportion of consumers in New Zealand’s main export markets said they would cease to buy New Zealand food products if certain GM products were released in this country.

As my colleage Larry Baldock said in his first reading speech to this bill, the recently released Treasury paper on the economic impacts of GM makes the point that overseas consumers are unlikely to base their purchase decisions on whether or not the product's country of origin is "GE free".  The survey showing some overseas consumers WOULD make a decision on this basis is misleading because it specifically brings New Zealand's GE status to the forefront of the survey participant's mind and asks them to make an abstract judgment.  In reality, they are unlikely to be thinking about this issue (or to know or even care where NZ stands) when making a purchase of a New Zealand food product that is itself not GM, and are in fact more likely to make a purchasing decision based on price.

It is also interesting to note that some of the groups calling for an extension of the moratorium claim that such an extension wouldn’t limit New Zealand’s economic opportunities because it may be 3-5 years before any genetically modified crop developed in New Zealand is commercialised anyway.  If this does turn out to be the case, then the lifting of the moratorium now won’t have any practical effect for several years anyway.  But if something does end up being ready for development before than – and these things are very difficult to accurately predict – then it would be a shame to see such an opportunity go begging when the regulatory regime necessary for such developments to proceed safely is already in place!  It is also important symbolically for potential future investors that any legal roadblocks are removed as soon as is safely possible.

The New Organisms and Other Matters Bill satisfies United Future’s policy of having the Recommendations of the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification in place before the lifting of the moratorium.  Now it is time for New Zealand to continue moving forward – safely and cautiously – but forward nontheless.