This is echoed by a leading UK businessman and civil servant who suggests that New Zealand milk production could be genetically modified to great commercial advantage: “Already New Zealand produces milk at approximately a third of the cost [of Europe]. What you want to do now is optimise the use of feed, and minimise the side effects of milk production such as methane and slurry. If you can modify fodder to better match the gut flora in ruminants you would get better conversion rates.”
He also talks about modifying the composition of milk. “Lactic acid intolerance affects large tracts of the world, including Japan - the Japanese get a rash from ordinary milk. With GM it’s possible to modify the composition of milk to make it more digestible.
Then there’s a technique that’s already being used by Pharmaceutical Proteins Ltd, who have genetically modified sheep to produce pharmaceutical proteins in their milk which are used to treat cystic fibrosis.”(53)
At the same time, protecting our rural farming base – both from the point-of-view of keeping up with the rest of the world and not getting out-of-step with increasingly organic European buyers, will also be vital.
Harry Griffin talks about how New Zealand is chosen to provide “clean” sheep to use in GM pharmaceutical production because of our relative freedom from scrapie disease.
Even the most market oriented people I spoke to, insist New Zealand needs to be careful. “Nothing could be worse than going down the GM track and finding your customers in South East Asia saying no. You have to educate your customer.”
There are already warnings from this direction. A week after fears of GM fertilised salmon eggs being washed into the wild, The Times environment correspondent, Nick Nuttall, filed a worrying report from researchers at the University of Purdue, Indiana. They had found that salmon modified with a human growth hormone gene grow much larger than the rest, so attracting hen salmon. However, large numbers of their offspring die before they are sexually mature.
Testing the hypothesis using Japanese medaka scientists found the GM fish attracted four times as many females as their smaller, unmodified rivals, but that only two thirds of the GM medaka survived to reproductive age.
Using a computer model, the scientists then tested what would happen if 60 GM fish got into a population of 60,000 wild ones. The population would become extinct in just 40 generations. They claim even one GM salmon would have the same catastrophic effect – it would just take longer.”
As Brian Johnson points out, “Careful planning 10 years ago would have stopped much of the current GM argument…Male sterile plants, pollen incompetencies and/or disabled pollen would have produced plants that would not outcross with wild relatives.
What can New Zealand learn from Monsanto’s experience? “For the industry to work together over the whole thing. Scientists are not very good at communication. It’s a very, very expensive science to do. And all the safety testing makes it more expensive…people insisting on more rigorous testing on are [trying to assess an] infinitely vanishing risk…Transparency is very important. But the dilemma is that if you confront people with too many details you can actually scare them more than help.”
Despite the thrashing it is taking in the sharemarket at the moment, Monsanto and the other giant biotech companies won’t go away: Globally there are now 57 approved GM products with another 300 awaiting approval. Of that Monsanto probably controls 17 products. Novartis, Agrevo, Zeneca and Dupont account for most of the rest. More interesting, most products would have originated in small companies with endless academics from all over the world involved.(54)
Against that background, any advantages in making New Zealand a GM-free zone will probably be short-term. Says Phil Dale, “In the long term science will move ahead and if New Zealand decides to step out of [the GM revolution] you’ll get left behind.”
What Dr Dale does advocate is a careful look at the GM/organics option which has – so far -- been rejected by the UK. I believe that organics and GM are beautifully complementary,” he continues.
“The science could go so many different ways. The challenge is to direct research in ways that are of benefit to mankind. That’s the difference between Britain and North America. The market forces rule view is much stronger in America. My gut reaction is that market forces are too crude really to determine our future.”
Derek Burke’s view is more global. “The issues are wider than just GM, for they bear on the wider question of how our society uses sciences to create wealth. This is one of the running issues for the next century – how we balance personal, national and international needs in a world where all significant decisions are taken at the global level and where the use of new technology will be one of the main drivers of economic growth."
Footnotes:
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