Sam Neill: In the field of GE food we're being sold a pup

This time of the year is normally reserved for optimism, but if you can detect the telltale tick of an ominous countdown, you are not alone. The Government has signalled its clear intention to lift the moratorium on the release of genetically modified organisms in October, come rain or shine.

Many people are alarmed by this. However, the Prime Minister has briskly labelled them "Luddites", somewhat unkindly, so we march forward to a scientific brave new world, like it or not.

The Government has been persuaded to sell us a dog. A rather ugly five-legged dog at that. And on close inspection it looks like the dog might be sporting a toad's rear end.

The problem with buying a crook dog, of course, is that it's very hard to sell on. Consider our major customers for instance. In Britain, all the major supermarket chains refuse to sell genetically modified food, and this stance is spreading to Europe.

In Asia, the Japanese, Koreans and Taiwanese have similarly shown themselves to be reluctant to buy GM food. The United States has been told by Japan that if Monsanto releases its GM wheat seed, all American wheat will be unacceptable. Just as virtually no American corn is now taken by European importers.

They know that you cannot grow GM crops as well as conventional crops without the two mixing. Nature ensures that with pollen, wind and bees genetic material is broadcast. And in Japan, as in Europe, even trace contamination is too much contamination.

There is no doubt that this resistance to GM food is consumer-driven: 71 per cent of European consumers on close questioning say they wouldn't touch it.

Why this overwhelming aversion? Of course in Europe, after mad cow disease and foot and mouth, people are understandably somewhat wary of modern farming practices. That is why they continue to present such a good opportunity for us as GM-free primary producers.

The branding "clean, green and GM-free" is potentially enormously attractive in the Northern Hemisphere. Could it be that the Government is under some pressure from our competitors to accept GM so there is no choice and we lose our advantage?

It's also fair to say that a good proportion of these consumers abroad find the idea of genetic modification downright troubling.

The crossing of species boundaries and the implications this has for evolution and the integrity of species (as well as individual life forms) is a concern that runs deep.

Making a genetically modified organism, you see, isn't like producing, say, a better conventional wheat such as the Hilgendorf; crossing good strains to produce an even better grain. It involves the insertion of genetic material from one organism into another to produce a transgenic organism.

Thus, as in one case, you might introduce fish genes into tomatoes to make them frost-resistant. Or bacterial toxins into crops to give them insecticidal properties.

And the Crop and Food Institute at Lincoln produced the famous example of a potato crossed with toad genes. I was accused by one eminent scientist in July of being a fantasist - but what scientist living in the real world could seriously imagine people actually wanting to eat a toad-potato? You have to laugh sometimes, don't you?

Interestingly, this same scientist has reportedly had a change of heart in respect of GM food.

Now, squeamish though it makes me feel, I find it impossible to argue against the use of GM in medicine under appropriate conditions. If, indeed, scientists can find a cure for a major disease, more power to them.

But the use of GM in the production of food or fibre at this point seems unacceptably risky.

We don't know nearly enough about what the release of GMOs into New Zealand, and the food chain, will mean for the environment and for human health.

But that's the dog the Government wants us to buy. Myself, I'd leave it in the vendor's yard, firmly tied to a tree.

* Actor Sam Neill is a member of the Sustainability Council.

Herald feature: Genetic Engineering