Farmers, exporters warn GM animals could damage 'brand New Zealand'

Agresearch wants to try to get cows to make human proteins in their milk. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Organic farmers fear "brand New Zealand" will be damaged if plans proceed to expand the range of genetically modified animals.

Farmers and exporters told a panel deciding whether to allow Agresearch to put human genes into goats, sheep and cows that overseas customers might stop buying New Zealand products if there were further trials.

Phillipa Jamieson, editor of Organic NZ magazine, said the plan was a serious risk. "All it could take is one, two, three stories in the mainstream media (in Europe) ... for our markets to be damaged," she said.

Olympic rower Rob Hamill told the Environmental Risk Management Authority that New Zealand should make the most of its isolation from other countries and reject GM. "Let the big countries that are hell-bent on creating GM organisms do it in their own backyard," he said.

A paper released yesterday by the Royal Society of New Zealand suggested European shoppers may be warming to GM products in the face of mounting worries about climate change and food security.

But it said there was little evidence about how GM trials affected the perception of non-GM food from the same country.

John Hartnell of Federated Farmers said he supported trials in containment but releasing GM material in the environment would be a different matter.

"The farming business of our members must not be put at risk because of (security) lapses," he said.

Agresearch wants to try to get the animals to make human proteins in their milk, which they hope could eventually be used to treat human diseases and boost New Zealand's income in the lucrative world pharmaceuticals market.

It plans to keep the animals behind a double layer of fencing, protected by an alarm system, at Ruakura near Hamilton.

Several people told ERMA they were worried about modified DNA escaping into the environment via faeces and placentas in the soil, and insects that had bitten GM animals.

Some anti-GM Pakeha criticised a plan to exclude Maori but not Pakeha DNA from being inserted into goats, sheep and cows.

Agresearch has said it will not use Maori DNA in proposed genetic modification trials in Hamilton because of cultural concerns.

Ms Jamieson, who is Pakeha, said she found the GM proposal "morally repugnant" and no human DNA should be used.

A spokesman for the local hapu Ngati Wairere, Wiremu Puke, said the hapu did not object to the trial as it appeared to be "low risk".

But Malibu Hamilton of the Te Kotuku Whenua, a consultancy with links to Ngati Wairere, said it went against Maori protocol to compromise the whakapapa, or genealogy, of a creature by artificially altering its gene structure.