'Floodgates' warning for Erma

By ANNE BESTON

Approval for ground-breaking experiments on human and goat genes in cows will "open the floodgates" for a much wider range of genetic experiments in this country, a hearing in Hamilton was told yesterday.

Lawyer Jamie Ferguson said state-owned science institute AgResearch wanted blanket approval from the Government's gene science watchdog, the Environmental Management Risk Authority, to genetically modify cows with a "cocktail of genetic elements".

He was representing GM opponents at the three-day hearing where protesters erected anti-GM banners and handed out bottles of milk labelled "GE".

Mr Ferguson argued that the lack of detail in AgResearch's proposal was so wide-ranging that the authority could not legally rule on it.

The institute is seeking approval to genetically modify cattle with a range of goat, human, deer, sheep and mouse genes.

The work is aimed at producing proteins in cow's milk that could treat human diseases but AgResearch admits the trials are also aimed at refining technology that produces transgenic animals and studying the effect on cows of the introduction of foreign genes.

Jill White, the hearing chairwoman and a former Labour MP, ruled that the three-day hearing should go ahead and a decision on legal issues would be made when all the evidence had been put before the five-member Erma panel.

GM opponents accuse AgResearch of deliberately driving through a wide-ranging GM proposal while refusing to detail exactly what organisms might be created.

Up to now, researchers have submitted lists, sometimes running into the thousands, of what genetically modified organisms will result from their work.

Erma member Colin Mantell asked why that was not done in this case. AgResearch lawyer Justin Smith said the intention was to use the institute's in-house biological safety committee to approve specific experiments.

AgResearch general science manager Dr Paul Atkinson said the cost of going back to Erma to get approval for every viable GM organism would stop this type of research in its tracks.

But the institute was not seeking to avoid "reasonable regulatory oversight" or its responsibility to the public, he said.

Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons argued that the cow experiments should be classed as a field trial, as earlier experiments had been.

A field trial application must meet tougher criteria and is subject to public hearings, while development work is not. Erma notified this application only because of wide public interest.

Dr Atkinson said four GM calves were now living at Ruakura from earlier GM work on producing the human myelin basic protein in cow's milk. While 51 cattle were impregnated in that research, just six pregnancies went to term.

Two other GM experiments, one on the muscle-growth inhibiting gene myostatin, had failed to transfer foreign genes to the calves born.

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