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Thursday, 12 June 2008 03:55 |
Canberra Times
Simon Grose
Original Publish Date: June 11, 2008
It's been good to get some rain out in our erstwhile dusty food plains west of the Divide, so good that farmers who have planted winter grains and other crops during recent months are "joyous", according to one observer.
Along with the rain, the sky has also been falling for some people because more than 100 of those farmers planted commercial acreages of genetically modified canola for the first time in Australia.
One who feels the weight of that sky on her shoulders is Western Australian Greens senator Rachel Siewert.
"Regulation of GM in this country is grossly inadequate and highlights why it is so important to maintain the moratorium on GM crops," she said last week.
Senator Siewert was applauding the move by WA Premier Alan Carpenter to follow SA Premier Mike Rann in continuing their state-based bans on GM food crops.
In an exercise in scaremongering, Carpenter, Rann and Siewert are winding back the clock several years and wilfully ignoring the work of Commonwealth regulators by claiming that GM canola had yet to be fully tested and proven safe for human consumption.
Two varieties of GM canola, one each from Monsanto and Bayer, were approved for commercial planting in late 2003 by the Gene Technology Regulator after a process which began in 1997 with trial plantings under controlled conditions.
Both varieties carry genetic resistance to proprietary weedkillers.
The regulator approved their commercial release after finding them to be "as safe for human health and the environment as conventional canola".
In 2000 and 2002 the then Australia New Zealand Food Authority separately approved food products derived from the GM varieties as safe for human consumption. In February of 2002 the authority's managing director, Ian Lindenmayer, was so jaded by the tactics of anti-GM lobbyists that he issued a statement saying they should "not mislead the consuming public with unsubstantiated assertions".
He pointed out that GM foods had then been in the world's food supply for more than a decade without any documented cases of harm being caused.
"The continual sledging of GM food safety by these groups has gone beyond the bounds of ethical lobbying practice," he said. Six years on, Lindenmayer would be disappointed to find the same rubbish being purveyed by elected representatives, especially by leaders of state governments who share oversight of the GM and food regulators via their relevant ministerial councils.
He would be glad, however, that the NSW and Victorian governments have decided to accept the regulators' decisions and enable their farmers to choose to grow GM canola commercially. (He would also be bemused as are most industry observers by the fact that Bayer has said it does not have enough seed of its InVigor variety to make it available in commercial quantities, leaving this GM field clear for its bitter rival.)
In March at least 300 farmers and others attended information meetings hosted by Monsanto. GM canola has since been planted on about 120 farms, some probably within a couple of hours' drive of the ACT.
So canola has now joined cotton and some flower varieties as the only GM crops planted commercially in Australia. Although this has come many years after GM canolas were first grown in North America and some Asian nations, the critics claim the comparatively rigorous Australian approval process is suspect because the regulators rely on data supplied by the seed companies.
This unfairly impugns the integrity and professionalism of the regulators, ignores the fact that seed companies will only stay in business if their crops are safe to grow and eat, and implies that Australia's public scientific resources should be saddled with the job of doing the seed companies' work for them. Meanwhile, the Australian public remains wary of GM foods. A survey last year by Biotechnology Australia found that 37per cent of people said they were likely to eat any GM food and 54per cent said they were not likely to. However, 48per cent said they were likely to eat packaged food containing GM ingredients or cooking oils derived from GM crops.
This continues a slow increase in public acceptance of GM foods, a trend that will continue as long as credible health or environmental problems do not arise and as more obviously advantageous GM crops are approved.
Sir Gus Nossal, whose review led to the Victorian Government's decisions to approve GM canola plantings, told a National Press Club audience last week that it was "genuinely bad luck" that canola was our first GM food test case.
Although GM canolas deliver environmental benefits because weedkillers they resist are biodegradable unlike triazine- based herbicides used with some conventionally bred varieties he said this kind of benefit did not cut through for the average consumer.
He foresees that this will change as next generation GM varieties such as drought-resistant wheat, frost- resistant horticultural crops, allergen-free rye grass and others with manifest benefits come through the regulatory process.
Meantime, Sir Gus counselled the use of "sweet reason" when it came to dealing with outdated GM fears and criticisms. He recalled that Mothers Against Genetic Engineering appeared before his inquiry.
"You listen and you study what it is that they're trying to tell you and you reach your conclusions and then you come back and say, 'Well, I've heard you, I don't agree with you, here are the reasons, and time will do the job I think'," he said.
Memo to Carpenter, Rann, Siewert et al.
Simon Grose is Canberra correspondent for Science Media.
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