GE maize seed heads for the burner

By ANNE BESTON and NZPA

A giant burn-up of maize seed begins today after more tests showed that maize plants grown at Pukekohe and Gisborne were GM-contaminated.

But scientists are puzzling over how it might have happened.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry will begin burning about 30 tonnes of the seed at Auckland Airport's incinerator.

The ministry's plant biosecurity director, Richard Ivess, said the Australian importer, Pacific Seeds, had received the results of further testing for genetic modification that virtually confirmed the contamination.

Company general manager Nick Gardner said the tests confirmed "low-level" contamination at less than 0.5 per cent.

The ministry has ordered further testing at accredited laboratories in Melbourne and the United States.

The harvested seed, hybridised from four lines of parent stock from the US, was certified GM-free when it left the US last year but no testing regime for GM contamination was in place for maize seed in New Zealand at that time.

Mr Ivess said either the seed was contaminated before it left the US or after it arrived in New Zealand.



Ministry officials said the seed was not grown for consumption, and none of it had entered the food chain.

Mr Gardner said the value of the 30 tonnes of maize seed being destroyed was about $20,000.

Pacific Seeds had about 10 per cent of the maize seed market in New Zealand, and had contract growers hybridise the crop from seed imported from Monsanto and from Garst Seed.

Mr Gardner said his company would not distribute maize seed to dealers for the rest of the year and warned that there could be critical shortages.

Compulsory testing of sweetcorn seed imports was introduced a year ago.

This month the testing was extended to maize seeds.

New Zealand seed company Corson has admitted that it grew GM maize in Gisborne as far back as the early 1990s. General manager Shane Lamont said there was no way that crops could have contaminated the plants involved in the latest alert.

He said the maize was grown in a "controlled nursery environment" from 1994 to 1998.

The maize, grown on behalf of multinational company Ciba-Geigy, was grown only in small amounts, and just 400kg of seed was produced over four years.

As a comparison, farmers used 25kg bags of seed and could use up to 16 bags in a planting, he said.

The maize was modified with a gene to protect the plants against the European corn borer, which is not a pest in New Zealand.

It was also grown before the Environmental Risk Management Authority was set up to police the creation of GM organisms.

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