KEY POINTS:
AgResearch says more than 100 million hectares of land overseas is planted with genetically engineered crops, and New Zealand needs to be able to keep up the technology.
"New Zealand's ability to remain globally competitive may be compromised unless it addresses GE crop and animal issues," the Crown Research Institute's general manager of applied biotechnologies, Jimmy Suttie, said today.
He said recent studies suggested that New Zealanders were becoming progressively less opposed to GE organisms, especially when there was an opportunity to improve human health.
AgResearch today called on New Zealanders to make submissions to the Environmental Risk Management Authority (Erma) over its controversial genetic engineering applications.
AgResearch is asking for a wide-ranging expansion of its transgenic livestock programme as it carries out research to underpin a national network of farms producing GE milk containing specialised proteins, and other products which can be used for pharmaceuticals or "functional foods".
Suttie also rejected some of the criticism of the GE work, which he said had circulated since the filing of applications to enable Agresearch and commercial partners to use GE proteins in the milk of transgenic cows and goats as nutraceutical ingredients and in biopharmaceuticals.
"Our strategy is to facilitate the development of a core capability in New Zealand for the production of high-value, specialist products for niche markets," he said.
Drugs, such as insulin, were already made overseas using GE bacteria in contained vats, and mammals naturally made complex proteins, such as lactoferrin, which is already extracted from normal cow's milk.
Suttie said that human proteins in GE milk could be a safe way of making large amounts of protein.
A GE drug produced overseas in transgenic goats (ATryn) was being used to help patients susceptible to recurrent deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary emboli.
Suttie suggested Agresearch's GE animals could possibly benefit a small group of people with "lysosomal diseases", inherited genetic defects which result in an enzyme deficiency.
Agresearch wanted to carry out tests on cows, goats, sheep, possums and hamsters at its Ruakura site near Hamilton, but was also seeking approval to carry out trials at other sites in other regions. Canterbury and Southland and other dairying regions had been proposed as most likely locations.
Transgenic animals would not be released into the environment or allowed to breed with non-GE animals outside containment.
He denied the Agresearch plans for GE milks posed a potential threat to overseas perceptions of Fonterra, because the containment farms would be tiny and their products were not expected to enter the conventional food chain.
The generic applications had side-stepped the Government's promise to deal with GE research on a case-by-case basis, but additional regulatory approvals would be needed for new products or knowledge.
Applications were framed to give the scientists "flexibility in the initial exploratory phase", but Erma was likely to set requirements on numbers of GE animals and the genetic materials to be used .
- NZPA
