Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues. He joined the Herald in 2018.
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Prime Minister Chris Luxon and Minister Judith Collins announced in August last year that the Government would end restrictions on gene technology. Video / Jason Oxenham
THE FACTS
Scientists say genetically modified (GM) foods have impacts on climate change, trade, public health and more. Current regulations effectively ban them from being grown or trialled outside the lab.
The Gene Technology Bill, designed to change this, has been referred back to Parliament after six months of select committee deliberations.
NZ First has reservations, which are preventing the bill being read a second time.
Ask Andrew Allan about climate change and this is what he says. “Climate change will be addressed by three things. New energy sources. Carbon capture, which is complicated and not showing the progress they probably expected. And plants.”
Plants are his thing. “Plants hoover up carbon andthey make food. People forget how enormous their value is to us.”
Allan is a principal scientist at the Bioeconomy Science Institute, the newly merged national science body that includes the Plant and Food Research Institute on Mt Albert Rd.
He’s also a fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi, a professor in Plant Biology at the University of Auckland and an internationally recognised authority in his field.
When it comes to plants, he says, “I’m cited in the literature more than any other plant biologist in this country.”
The Bioeconomy Science Institute says his thing is: “Evolution of genetic technologies and their potential to support sustainable food production.” Or to put that another way: how can we use agricultural science to reduce emissions and build a stronger economy?
It’s a question that should unite everyone from greenies to farmers to politicians to consumers, and to a large degree it probably does. But the answers we reach are far from united.
The stalled progress of the Government’s Gene Technology Bill is the latest evidence of that. The bill has been through six months of select committee deliberations and is now back with Cabinet, but NZ First has delayed its reintroduction to the House.
Winston Peters says the bill is “too liberal” as it lacks strong enough safeguards for human health and the environment.
Greenpeace, Soil & Health and the Sustainable Business Network are probably hoping that will be an end to it.
Others, including the Royal Society Te Apārangi, both the former chief science advisers to the Prime Minister, industry bodies like AgResearch and the Livestock Improvement Council, and Andy Allan himself, sit on a spectrum from disappointed to extremely dismayed.
When I talked to him at his home one Saturday recently, he had several reasons for wanting the bill to progress, so well-regulated GMOs could be grown here. But climate was top of mind. “We’ve just got to reduce emissions,” he said,“and we’ll become a very green country.”
How is it that greenies are on both sides of this debate? Is there a way through the impasse?
Professor Andrew Allan talks with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology at the time, Judith Collins, at the Plant and Food Research Centre last year. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Gene technology has leapt ahead in the last 20 years. Allan talks about “techie foods” (his term): not new organisms with new DNA, but organisms that have been modified without adding any material from elsewhere.
The CRISPR approach, for example, adapts a natural bacterial defence mechanism in plants, with greater accuracy and cost-efficiency than was possible before.
There are now some tomatoes that are believed to boost cancer resistance. In agriculture, experiments are under way to modify ryegrass and clover so they can reduce the production of methane.
“There’s no new DNA,” says Allan. “The plants are just bred a different way.”
The select committee labelled New Zealand rules around genetically modified organisms (GMOs) as the strictest in the OECD. And we’re 25 years behind Australia: the bill now with Cabinet is modelled on that country’s Gene Technology Act 2000.
Our existing approach, governed by the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996, is costly and complex. It has allowed almost no progress in the use of genetics in farming practices, even as we love to tell ourselves we have the most advanced agricultural technology in the world.
Labs can do the genetic work, but field trials must be conducted overseas. And even if those trials show the products are effective and safe, they can’t be introduced here.
And yet, packaged foods with GM ingredients grown overseas are sold in our shops.
Allan says the meatless hamburger patties sold by Impossible Foods are delicious. But also expensive. “They’re imported from the US because it’s illegal to grow the soybeans here.”
Many of the concerns expressed to the select committee would be widely held.
Commonsense Organics, for example, warned we “do not know the long-term effects of genetically modified plants on the soils we rely on for our existence”.
Allan says we do know. He points out that GM foods have been grown and consumed for decades overseas, with no known adverse effects on human health.
“About 95% of maize [corn] in the US is GMO and there have been zero negative effects.” He says that in Oklahoma, which is big on soybeans, GMOs require less spray, “so they have more monarch butterflies and other insects”.
Soil & Health Association chairman Charles Hyland told the select committee: “New Zealanders have a right to know what we’re growing and eating – and to choose food that aligns with their values.”
Allan agrees. “Food should be labelled. Broadly speaking, we have three systems of farming available to us. There’s conventional and organic, which we have now. They co-exist and have done so for decades. It works. So let’s get that for techie foods too.”
Label them all? “Yes. Conventional, organic and novel.”
Whether we reduce, enlarge or keep the national dairy herd the same size, we're going to need those cows producing less methane. Photo / Adam Simpson
But, added Hyland, “This bill would still allow GE [genetic engineering] into our farms, gardens and food, risking contamination, loss of organic certification, lawsuits and Aotearoa’s GE-free status. Anyone who doesn’t want GE could face difficulties avoiding it.”
Allan says this isn’t true either, and points again to the real-world experience of America.
“The US has the largest organic food industry in the world. It also has the largest techie food industry. They co-exist very well.”
Hāpai Te Hauora, the peak Maori public health body inside the Ministry of Health, told the select committee it “supports scientific advancements towards health and the environment but opposes this bill’s deregulation”.
“Our primary concern is that the bill ... goes beyond best practice,” it said.
Again, Allan says this is wrong. Modelled on the Australian law and informed by the regulations and experience of the EU, the US and elsewhere, he says, the bill will become “a new gold standard”.
Greenpeace and the Sustainable Business Network both warned about the economic consequences of putting out “what remains of the country’s ‘clean, green’ and GE-free image” at risk.
Also wrong, says Allan. “Consumers buy on price. Australian lamb is cheaper than New Zealand lamb, so consumers overseas buy more of it. But Australia allows GM crops. Consumers don’t seem to mind.”
For economic prosperity, he says, “We need several more kiwifruits, each one bringing in billions of dollars. I don’t know what they’ll be. But more growers, more crops, and no emissions. That’s our future.”
And, he warns, despite what we might wish, it won’t be organic. “Organics account for 3% of our food production and less than 0.3% of our food exports.”
He says organic farming is about 25% less productive, which means it requires more land to produce as much food. “All the data is pretty clear on that.”
This is bad news for climate action.
“Organic beef farming is the worst,” Allan says, because it uses more land than other forms of agriculture and it “produces lots of emissions that can’t be mitigated”.
If you raise cattle on grass modified for low-methane emissions, you can’t call it organic.
How do we get past this? Allan knows what he’s talking about – but so do some of his critics. It’s not an easy topic and there are no simple solutions.
I find his argument for effective climate action strong. We need to reduce agricultural emissions, locally and globally, and we can’t do it without making good use of good science. This is now critical.
As for NZ First, its objections to the bill are vaguely expressed and, to my mind, troubling. It looks to me like the party is pandering to a base full of sceptics of all kinds of science.
However, if the Gene Technology Bill really is stuck, there is a way forward: deliberative democracy.
I proposed it last week for some other gnarly political issues, but this one is perfect. Assemble a representative, non-aligned group of citizens, give them reasoned and factually based briefings from all sides, and allow them to form some conclusions. Televise it.
Make sure MPs watch, and insist they get ready to act on the outcome.
