Study to explore views on genetic engineering

By SIMON COLLINS science reporter

Attitudes to genetic modification will be studied further in an $800,000 research project starting on July 1.

The survey, to be co-ordinated by Lincoln University, is one of three new research proposals on genetic modification that will be paid for by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, subject to settling details in the next two months.

Lincoln sociologist Dr John Fairweather said the two-year survey would investigate people's thoughts on "technological risk".

Collaborators include US firm Decision Research, other researchers in Australia and Britain, Otago University anthropologist Hugh Campbell and Auckland University.

The other two studies, which will be announced after the May 23 Budget, are a $1.8 million project on "horizontal gene transfer" led by the Institute of Environmental Science and Research and an even larger study on "vertical gene transfer" led by Landcare Research.

In horizontal transfer, modified genes pass from one organism via a second organism to a third one, such as from a plant via soil bacteria to another plant.

In vertical transfer, genes pass from one closely related plant to another via pollen.

Lobby group GE Free New Zealand has attacked the foundation's failure to put money into a rival $2.4 million project by the new Institute of Gene Ecology, created at Canterbury University in December.

That project would have investigated both horizontal gene transfer and public attitudes.

The Canterbury institute proposed to test the soil at the controversial Kerikeri site where HortResearch experimented with genetically modified tamarillos between 1997 and 2000.

"HortResearch offered to decontaminate the site," said GE Free Northland leader Zelka Grammer.

"We held back from that, hoping to have independent research done."

Instead, HortResearch will now be a partner in the Environmental Science and Research-led consortium.

The other partners in that study are AgResearch, which is testing genetically modified cows in the Waikato, and Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, which is testing genetically modified cotton.

The Environmental Science and Research chief executive, Dr John Hay, said there was no doubt that horizontal gene transfer happened.

"What we are interested in is what are the conditions you may create that force horizontal gene transfer to occur at a much faster rate than normally occurs in nature," he said.

For example, the widespread use of antibiotics in the past 50 years had forced germs to develop new strains that were resistant to inoculation very quickly.

"We have super-bugs. That is horizontal gene transfer," Dr Hay said.

Landcare research manager Dr David Penman said of the third project, into vertical transfer, that there had been little research using New Zealand native plants.

"There might be quite different risks that emerge, as opposed to the risks in the US," he said.

Landcare has proposed a six-year study costing between $400,000 and $500,000 a year using collaborators from the United States, Australia and Massey University.

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