[Imc-aotearoa-ed] NZ GE crop release Report

[Chris Wheeler]

Hi All - Please post this as widely around your 
network as possible - it fits a food safety as well as a health agenda. It's 
the uncensored version of what is really going on in New Zealand over 
the approaching field release of genetically engineered crops. Biotech 
here is just an extension of the failed "NZ Experiment" by the same 
politicians who screwed the country in the first place. All the best, Chris


New Zealand Government drags country into GE (2,545 
words)

Against NZ-wide protests it seems general field 
release of GE crops will shortly take place in what 
could have been the best site in the world for a 
biotech-free zone. Chris Wheeler, former head of New 
Zealand's foremost organic farm lobby group, the 
Soil & Health Association, investigates. 


(Wellington, October 4, 2003) New Zealand is 
presently doing a slow death march towards open-
slather field release of genetically engineered farm 
crops, dictated by a government which has 
relentlessly ignored every reasoned argument for 
retaining this country's totally GE-free status. 
With all the subtlety of a rubbish compactor, a NZ 
Government made up of Christian fundamentalists and 
the tattered remnants of the Lange/Douglas regime 
that turned this country into an economic basket 
case in the 80s, is forging ahead with legislation 
that will pave the way for the end of the present 
New Zealand-wide moratorium on GE crops on October 
29th.

It seems an absurd move to make at the present time 
for a nation which destroyed its local industrial 
base with market forces ideology in the 80s and is 
now almost totally dependent for its overseas 
earnings on the export of conventional or organic 
agricultural products to Northern Hemisphere markets 
which not only demand GE-free produce, but have 
already warned New Zealand that GE contamination of 
any sort is unacceptable.

To comprehend this apparent economic suicide by an 
almost totally farm-dependent country you have to 
understand the weird political mindsets that still 
rule in the only nation in the world to totally 
convert to Chicago School economic theories, a move 
that took New Zealand from its position among the 
top ten nations in the developed world in the 60s 
and 70s to its present position as a near economic 
basket case ranked among the worst performers in the 
OECD.

For nearly twenty years now, Kiwis (appropriately, 
perhaps, a flightless bird that digs for worms in 
the dark) have been asked, by a succession of 
politicians and a kaleidoscope of ever-shifting 
coalition governments, to wait for the light at the 
end of the tunnel promised by the original 1984 
Lange (1)/Douglas Labour Government, while 
experiencing huge social dislocation, dramatic drops 
in household income and spending power, huge 
increases in violent and property crime, and the 
disappearance of guaranteed employment and leisure 
time.

Regrettably we never seem to learn, having re-
elected in the current minority Labour Government 
many of the very team - including the Prime Minister 
Helen Clark - who instituted the disastrous "New 
Zealand Experiment" in the first place! Clark, it 
should be added, is a wholehearted supporter of 
genetic engineering and sees GE as another heady 
experiment/fire truck to chase, with all the glamour 
of Milton Friedman's original ideas, plus the added 
incentive of getting back on side with a pro-GE 
White House after a 20-year stand-off caused by New 
Zealand's anti-nuclear policy.

It's an undoubted fact that Helen Clark's adamant 
position in favour of GE is also a reflection of the 
hubris and vanity afflicting her following her easy 
victory over National Party PM Jenny Shipley at the 
close of the 20th Century. Shipley's "Matron Knows 
Best" condescension towards her many critics, 
coupled with her cabinet's epic absence of 
competence in almost every area of administration, 
made a Clark-led Labour coalition victory inevitable 
and ever since New Zealand's current PM has ridden 
high on both Preferred Leader and citizen popularity 
polls. 

That status may not last much longer, however. The 
manner in which the GE issue in New Zealand has 
caught the imagination of the thinking portion of 
the population has surprised even this critic, with 
grass roots opposition to GE spreading rapidly from 
professional bodies such as Physicians and 
Scientists for Responsible Genetics and the talent-
heavy Sustainability Council (including ex-national 
farmers' head Sir Peter Elworthy and Hollywood star 
Sam Neill) to the high-profile Mothers Against 
Genetic Engineering (MADGE), who recently grabbed 
public attention by demonstrating in fluorescent 
pink bras in Parliament's debating chamber. 

As I was just about to post this story MADGE have 
shocked even wider debate - this time over the $26.4 
million of public money voted towards GE research 
involving the insertion of human genes into cows - 
by bill-boarding and postering the main centres with 
the provocative image of a nude MADGE member with 
genetically engineered multiple breasts attached to 
a milking machine!

The Government's case for GE hasn't been helped by 
recent news that Denmark is moving to ban 
glyphosate/Roundup in agriculture due to residues of 
that chemical with its known cancer link now being 
present in that nation's artesian water supply. Many 
NZ communities draw their water from aquifers where 
glyphosate and other leaching pesticides are popular 
and tests in the early 90s indicated pesticide 
contamination in all the main underground water 
sources. Glyphosate resistance is, of course, the 
chief selling point in the proposed GE crops, 
including the recently proposed (by state quango 
Crop & Food Research) GE onions that NZ taxpayer 
money is funding, but the international evidence 
from over eight years of glyphosate resistant GE 
crops indicates that not only do weeds become 
resistant to it (and all the other favoured 
herbicides), but that all-round pesticide use 
actually increases rather than decreases, 
contradicting the main selling point for GE crops in 
the first place, i.e. low pesticide use.

So Helen Clark is buying into a fight that is going 
to cost her dearly. We've already seen Auckland's 
main street packed end to end with over 50,000 
demonstrators against GE - something that hasn't 
been seen in New Zealand since the unemployment 
riots of the Great Depression. And, this week 
(October 11), further demonstrations with all the 
sophisticated Internet-savvy pre-planning of the 
Seattle and Genoa anti-WTO confrontations will be 
taking place in all the main centres on both islands 
and sending an even stronger message to the Clark 
Government that its rigid position in favour of GE 
is unacceptable. With even normally conservative 
opposition leaders like NZ First's Winston Peters 
speaking out in favour of a further five year 
moratorium on GE field releases, PM Clark and her 
unheeding cabinet would do well to start listening 
now, before they lose electoral confidence and deal 
a death blow to the last sector of the national 
economy which still makes real money for the country 
- agriculture, which, bolstered by a heavily 
promoted "Clean & Green" image based on conventional 
and organic production methods, contributes 75 
percent of annual export earnings.

Realistically I can't see her listening at this 
point, however. She and her fussy ex-school ma'am 
Environment Minister Marian Hobbs dig themselves 
deeper and deeper into a rigid biotech defence 
position week by week as October 29 approaches, 
making it almost impossible for any compromise to be 
reached at this point without the loss of 
considerable political "face". More to the point, 
they have all been caught out lying over the 
"accidental" releases of GE contaminated corn at 
field sites up and down both North and South Islands 
and the suspicion amongst all of us with any insight 
into on-farm matters is that the GE corn release in 
2000 (and possibly both earlier and later), far from 
being "accidental" was deliberately and carefully 
planned by the biotech corporates in North America 
who supplied the seed in the first place.

This, of course, is the inevitable conclusion you 
will come to if you read Kiwi GE activist Nicky 
Hager's revealing book, Seeds of Distrust, (2) on 
the whole GE corn debacle that led up to the 2002 NZ 
parliamentary election. Over the past two months as 
the official investigation into some of the book's 
claims has limped to an end (earnestly, but 
incompetently covered up by Labour PR flakes) it is 
quite clear that the Labour Party deliberately lied 
and tried to hide evidence of a GE release and then 
played dirty politics with the naïve Greens, 
effectively smearing them as treacherous trouble-
makers in the electorate's eyes. 

This cost the Greens party votes under the new MMP 
voting system and their place in a coalition 
Government and heralded in a Labour/Christian 
Democrat alliance notable for its lickspittle 
compliance with Helen Clark's every whim. Notable 
also for some particularly silly pieces of 
legislation like the poorly executed farm "Fart 
Tax", which have clogged the Parliamentary process 
for the past year while more vital issues are 
ignored. These ignored issues include New Zealand's 
recent UN world ranking third place for child 
murders and child abuse and the huge increase in 
drug-related crimes, which an under-staffed police 
force seem unable to stop - all, one should add, an 
inevitable part of the rot that entered NZ society 
in 1984.. 

Are New Zealand farmers aware of the implications in 
taking on GE crops that North American farmers have 
already proved cost more, yield less and lose them 
export markets? 

Not really. Farmers I've spoken to all up and down 
New Zealand are almost totally ignorant of the true 
state of affairs out on the prairies of North 
America. Despite the vital importance of such 
information at this point in time, none of them were 
aware that even the US Department of Agriculture's 
Economic Research Service has stated categorically 
that it can find no advantages to US farmers in 
growing GE crops and, furthermore, cannot explain 
farmers' earlier ready acceptance of biotech 
industry promises. (3) 

The reason for this ignorance is not hard to find. 
The New Zealand farm press, these days largely owned 
by bean counters in Australia and heavily reliant on 
chemical/biotech industry advertising, criminally 
neglects the whole issue of GE failures and only 
grudgingly mentions organic agriculture despite the 
geometric growth of NZ organic exports over the past 
five years. A recent survey conducted by the South 
Island's Lincoln University found that the majority 
of Kiwi farmers surveyed were still sitting on the 
fence over the whole GE issue. More to the point, 
the Clark Government has just voted a further $80 
million to biotech experiments, which includes the 
sum mentioned earlier for the human genes-into-cows 
absurdity. 

Typically, any GE research application over the past 
five years has received millions in taxpayer dollars 
and farmers have been misled at every turn by 
biotech interests and politicians alike into 
thinking that GE is the wave of the future for 
farming. Government investment in biotech, after 
all, proves the point. Organic agriculture only 
received $300,000 from government in the same 
period! In fact organic agriculture, the only 
agricultural area in New Zealand showing huge growth 
and the only sector of the international produce 
market facing an insatiable demand is, by contrast, 
almost completely ignored in the very country which 
could most successfully link it to New Zealand's 
existing "Clean & Green" mythology. Unfortunately a 
general lack of political savvy in the NZ organics 
movement doesn't help matters, but that's another 
story.

The general apathy demonstrated by New Zealand's 
ruling Federated Farmers towards key GE issues is 
not, of course, shared by their cousins across the 
Tasman Sea, who have effectively obtained state-wide 
bans on GE crops everywhere but in Queensland and 
the Northern Territory. As much as anything else, 
this is probably a reflection of the fact that 
Aussie farmers are a lot better served by both their 
farmer organisations, their rural media and their 
state political machines.

New Zealand farmers should have made careful note of 
the negative reaction of Japanese importers to last 
June's discovery that a NZ sweet corn shipment was 
contaminated with GE corn. But they all seem to have 
been asleep at the wheel when the news came through. 
Japan and the European Union, our other major 
customer for non-GE farm produce, told New Zealand 
years ago that their consumers wanted only 
guaranteed non-GE produce and this country with its 
narrow agricultural littorals and steady winds is 
probably the worst location in the world for 
maintaining segregation zones between organic and 
conventional crops and their GE equivalents. We 
simply CANNOT guarantee GE-free status of a 
conventional or organic crop once we permit planting 
of its GE equivalent. Wind-blown GE pollen and seed 
dispersal is even more likely in NZ than on the 
prairies of North America where it has already made 
the growing of organic or conventional canola and - 
probably, ultimately - corn and soya, impossible.

But it's a comment on a national malaise that has 
bewildered overseas visitors whenever they come up 
against it - a dumb evasion of intellectually-
demanding issues coupled to grovelling acceptance of 
undemocratic Government diktats - that best explains 
why New Zealanders will ultimately let Helen Clark 
have her way and see this country totally cave in to 
corporate biotech demands for open-slather GE 
planting.

I'd like to think it could be different, but 40 
years of activism on social and environmental issues 
tells me that New Zealand politicians in particular 
never learn and the colonial cringe that sees us 
always bend eventually to North American corporate-
led paternalism will see our "Clean & Green" 
mythology crumble into the dust where it probably 
belongs.

When all is said and done, the reality at an 
agricultural level in New Zealand has been that we 
readily embraced chemical farming, including the 
most carcinogenic pesticides (and their 
consequences!), when American corporates offered it 
to us once before and we will do the same thing 
again - unquestioningly - now that those same 
corporates are offering us GE crops. Unfortunately 
for commonsense, as well as intelligence, there is 
neither the political will nor the support from the 
bulk of New Zealand's conservative farming community 
to do anything else.



(1.) New Zealanders who followed the original 
Parliamentary debate on the nation's anti-nuclear 
legislation derive cynical amusement from the news 
that 1984 Labour Prime Minister David Lange recently 
received an "Alternative Nobels" Right Livelihood 
Award "for his steadfast work over many years for a 
world free of nuclear weapons." If the truth be 
known, Lange reluctantly supported NZ's anti-nuclear 
legislation as a sop to public opinion, while busy 
about destroying the NZ economy and selling off 
taxpayer assets to the highest overseas bidder 
according to the IMF and World Bank's classic 
Friedman model. Wealthy NZers cashed up under the 
Lange regime, buying up state assets in insider 
deals matching anything Russian Mafiosi have since 
pulled off, and several of the rich white men who 
benefited most are still wandering the world for 
global capitalism promoting myths about the success 
of "The New Zealand Experiment" to those silly 
enough to listen. The truth about what really 
happened to NZ is still hard to find inside the 
country itself due to monitoring and censorship of 
the media by corporate law teams employed by those 
who benefited most. Although in failing health, 
Lange still tries to stifle criticism of his years 
in power with threats of litigation and as a 
consequence of all the above most New Zealanders 
still have only the vaguest idea of his true role in 
their slide into Third World status. Genetic 
engineering is far from being the first silly 
experiment NZ politicians have indulged themselves 
with.

(2.) Nicky Hager, "Seeds of Distrust - The Story of 
a GE Cover-Up", Craig Potton Publishing, Nelson, NZ, 
2002.

(3.) "The Adoption of Bioengineered Crops," Report 
of the Economic Research Service, US Dept of 
Agriculture, May 2002, Website: 
<www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer810/>
ENDS