Dialogue: GE experiments must stop until commission reports

JEANETTE FITZSIMONS* says the Government has blundered in allowing field trials to continue while a royal commission inquires into genetic engineering.

The Government has just announced the long-awaited royal commission of inquiry into genetic engineering. The start of this inquiry meets an election commitment from the Greens and recognises the wishes of the 92,000 people who signed a Green petition.

The Greens are pleased that our input to the terms of reference have been accepted and the commission will look at a wide range of issues - ethics, science, risk, health, ecology and economics.

What pleases us a lot less is that the Government has effectively ignored our equally strong request for a halt to new genetic engineering field trials outside a secure laboratory during the term of the inquiry.

The absence of a meaningful moratorium means new field trials will continue to be approved. This pre-empts and undermines the inquiry. Some plant trials will have to comply with stricter conditions to ensure that reproductive material such as seeds and pollen do not escape from the site. But the highly controversial experiments with human genes in sheep and cattle will not be restricted.

The call for a moratorium is not just about the risk of escape. It is about ensuring that the commission is free to ask New Zealanders whether they want this technology in our country or not.

Simply because genetic engineering has entered our country by stealth is no reason why we cannot reject it. A genetic engineering-free New Zealand - at least outside of secure laboratories - is a very real possible outcome of this inquiry, if only enough of us demand it.

But the more capital and careers are invested in this technology now, the harder it will be to turn away from it if that is the recommendation of the bulk of the people who give evidence to the commission. One cannot escape the conclusion that the Government believes that after the year of inquiry it will be business as usual.

Genetic engineering marks a turning point in the history of life on Earth. It marks the culmination of a long process by which human beings no longer see themselves as part of nature but use their power to dominate all life.

Genetic engineering for food has concentrated on changes that are of no benefit to the consumer such as herbicide resistance so more herbicide can be used and longer shelf-life to benefit industry. To date, the consumer resistance has been so powerful that scientists now justify their work by promising miracle cures for disease.

In a 40-page application, the crown research institute AgResearch explained the benefits to modern agriculture from removing a gene from sheep to enable them to produce twice as much meat. Yet, despite only two sentences in the entire application regarding human health, this application was pushed endlessly by AgResearch as being designed to solve muscle and heart problems in humans.

These are the ways that genetic engineering is attempting to squeeze its way into mainstream acceptability. On the surface, the arguments are persuasive.

Genetic engineering of sheep to try to find treatments for cystic fibrosis and congenital emphysema, genetically engineering pigs to provide more suitable organs to transplant into sick humans, genetically engineering trees to make them grow straighter and with fewer knots - the list goes on.

Gene technology is being increasingly sold to an increasingly suspicious public as the means by which we can prevent naturally occurring disease and extend human life. We may well be able to use this science to do this. The question is: to what extent do we want to?

Do we want to overcome all natural processes and try to live forever? Do we want to remove the diseases that are caused by our unhealthy consumption and environment? Do we want to force nature to produce unnatural products and yields in an attempt to sustain our unsustainable lifestyles? Do we want to fundamentally alter life itself?

Or do we want to strive to recreate a sustainable world with a natural balance between all species and a respect for all life?

These are the questions the royal commission must address, and the Greens will make sure it does. Different people, given the same facts, may choose to draw the line in different places. I can accept work in a secure laboratory to produce new medicines where there is no release of any living genetically engineered organism.

But food must be excluded, and any release of living organisms into the atmosphere where they can multiply and change our whole environment - as, for example, the introduction of possums did.

It is a shame that while we weigh up these heavy questions, our scientists will continue their work with no mandate.

* Jeanette Fitzsimons is a co-leader of the Green Party.

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