For those too young to remember, in July 2002, just a few weeks before a general election, Prime Minister Helen Clark was interviewed by TV3’s John Campbell. It was a fiery encounter. Campbell, citing an impending book by Nicky Hager, Seeds of Distrust, alleged that GM corn had been accidentally released into New Zealand’s food supply and the incident covered up.
Clark was blindsided by Campbell’s questioning and was visibly angry. Afterwards, she referred to him as a ’little creep’. ‘Corngate’ was born.
The bombshell interview and its fallout hit Labour in the polls, poisoned its relationship with the Greens, and possibly cost it a parliamentary majority. Although Helen Clark formed a government after the election, she needed support from Jim Anderton’s Progressives and Peter Dunne’s United Future.
Corngate echoed down the years. For over two decades it coloured politicians’ appetite to move beyond an ultra-cautious approach to GM regulation. Afraid of a repeat of 2002, politicians steered clear of the issue.
Until now. In December, the government introduced the Gene Technology Bill, which will reform the regulation of GM.
It is long overdue. The current regulatory framework for GM is no longer fit for purpose. It is so restrictive that New Zealand scientists often conduct their research overseas rather than navigate the byzantine domestic approval processes. The costs of compliance frequently exceed the costs of the experiments themselves.
Take AgResearch's promising high metabolisable energy ryegrass, which could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from livestock. It had to undergo field trials overseas because dealing with New Zealand's regulatory system was too onerous.
These are not just inconveniences. They represent lost opportunities which have only grown over the years as science has developed. Many countries, including Australia, Canada, England, the EU, and Japan, have changed their GM regulations or are proposing to do so. New Zealand is increasingly an outlier in maintaining regulations designed for a different era.
New Zealand's productivity growth has stalled. There is a strong need for new tools to give it a kickstart. GM offers opportunities across multiple sectors, but New Zealand can only seize these opportunities with a regulatory system that enables innovation.
As Prime Minister Luxon recently emphasised in his State of the Nation speech, New Zealand needs to shift from a culture of ‘no’ to one of ‘yes’, embracing growth and innovation. New Zealand’s brightest minds must develop solutions to challenges like climate change and agricultural productivity without being forced to take their ideas offshore.
The Gene Technology Bill offers a chance to break free from regulatory aspic. Inspired by Australian legislation, it will replace a one-size-fits-all approach to GM with a system that matches regulatory oversight to risk.
Medical researchers would be able to develop new treatments more efficiently. Agricultural scientists could work on crops that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase productivity, and resist drought and disease. Conservation efforts would benefit from innovative pest control solutions, such as genetic sterilisation and reducing the use of pesticides and poisons. This would happen under oversight focused on managing risks rather than bureaucratic compliance.
Public opinion globally and in New Zealand seems to have become more accepting of GM, although there are still plenty of critics.
Some have raised concerns about a potential impact on our agricultural exports and ‘clean, green’ image. These can be managed. Australia, with its more enabling legislation, has not lost market access. It maintains both a thriving organic sector and significant GM research and development. Meanwhile, New Zealand exporters, including Fonterra, will continue to be sensitive to consumers’ needs and preferences offshore.
Others, including organic producers, have concerns about the cross-pollination of GM plants with non-GM plants. There are strategies to deal with this risk. They include buffer zones; adjusting planting dates to avoid overlapping flowering periods; GM plant sterility or seedless varieties (biological containment); and other coexistence measures like crop rotation, dedicated machinery for GM and non-GM plants, and clear labelling.
And others worry about insufficient public consultation or perceived weak safeguards for safety, the environment and cultural matters. However, the Bill provides risk-based oversight through an independent regulator within the Environmental Protection Authority, supported by technical and Māori advisory committees.
Parliament’s Health Select Committee is now considering the Gene Technology Bill and has called for submissions. As with all Bills, there will be areas in which it can be improved. Hopefully, rational discussion will lead to regulation that enables research and development, generates new jobs in knowledge-intensive industries, and provides solutions to some of New Zealand’s many challenges.
As the Prime Minister has emphasised, going for productivity growth is no longer optional – it is essential for future prosperity.
It is time to finally lay to rest the ghosts of Corngate.
Nick is a Senior Fellow, focusing on local government, resource management, and economic policy. This article was first published HERE
Corngate echoed down the years. For over two decades it coloured politicians’ appetite to move beyond an ultra-cautious approach to GM regulation. Afraid of a repeat of 2002, politicians steered clear of the issue.
Until now. In December, the government introduced the Gene Technology Bill, which will reform the regulation of GM.
It is long overdue. The current regulatory framework for GM is no longer fit for purpose. It is so restrictive that New Zealand scientists often conduct their research overseas rather than navigate the byzantine domestic approval processes. The costs of compliance frequently exceed the costs of the experiments themselves.
Take AgResearch's promising high metabolisable energy ryegrass, which could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from livestock. It had to undergo field trials overseas because dealing with New Zealand's regulatory system was too onerous.
These are not just inconveniences. They represent lost opportunities which have only grown over the years as science has developed. Many countries, including Australia, Canada, England, the EU, and Japan, have changed their GM regulations or are proposing to do so. New Zealand is increasingly an outlier in maintaining regulations designed for a different era.
New Zealand's productivity growth has stalled. There is a strong need for new tools to give it a kickstart. GM offers opportunities across multiple sectors, but New Zealand can only seize these opportunities with a regulatory system that enables innovation.
As Prime Minister Luxon recently emphasised in his State of the Nation speech, New Zealand needs to shift from a culture of ‘no’ to one of ‘yes’, embracing growth and innovation. New Zealand’s brightest minds must develop solutions to challenges like climate change and agricultural productivity without being forced to take their ideas offshore.
The Gene Technology Bill offers a chance to break free from regulatory aspic. Inspired by Australian legislation, it will replace a one-size-fits-all approach to GM with a system that matches regulatory oversight to risk.
Medical researchers would be able to develop new treatments more efficiently. Agricultural scientists could work on crops that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase productivity, and resist drought and disease. Conservation efforts would benefit from innovative pest control solutions, such as genetic sterilisation and reducing the use of pesticides and poisons. This would happen under oversight focused on managing risks rather than bureaucratic compliance.
Public opinion globally and in New Zealand seems to have become more accepting of GM, although there are still plenty of critics.
Some have raised concerns about a potential impact on our agricultural exports and ‘clean, green’ image. These can be managed. Australia, with its more enabling legislation, has not lost market access. It maintains both a thriving organic sector and significant GM research and development. Meanwhile, New Zealand exporters, including Fonterra, will continue to be sensitive to consumers’ needs and preferences offshore.
Others, including organic producers, have concerns about the cross-pollination of GM plants with non-GM plants. There are strategies to deal with this risk. They include buffer zones; adjusting planting dates to avoid overlapping flowering periods; GM plant sterility or seedless varieties (biological containment); and other coexistence measures like crop rotation, dedicated machinery for GM and non-GM plants, and clear labelling.
And others worry about insufficient public consultation or perceived weak safeguards for safety, the environment and cultural matters. However, the Bill provides risk-based oversight through an independent regulator within the Environmental Protection Authority, supported by technical and Māori advisory committees.
Parliament’s Health Select Committee is now considering the Gene Technology Bill and has called for submissions. As with all Bills, there will be areas in which it can be improved. Hopefully, rational discussion will lead to regulation that enables research and development, generates new jobs in knowledge-intensive industries, and provides solutions to some of New Zealand’s many challenges.
As the Prime Minister has emphasised, going for productivity growth is no longer optional – it is essential for future prosperity.
It is time to finally lay to rest the ghosts of Corngate.
Nick is a Senior Fellow, focusing on local government, resource management, and economic policy. This article was first published HERE
9 comments:
The ironic thing about that appalling John Campbell interview (and the fake facts in Nicky Hagar's book) is that, far from there being a cover-up, Environment Minister Marion Hobbs had called a press conference the previous 19 December to announce this "leak" of GM sweetcorn. But the media had no interest in publishing this as they were in awe of Mr Hagar and treated him as a god whose utterances were above question. I was a senior journalist at the DomPost at the time and tried to write a story pointing out the facts, including details of the Hobbs announcement of the previous 19 December, but I was ordered not too. The fake news was far too good to ruin with the facts. It was disgraceful journalism and a forerunner of today's, when our media actively refuse to publish inconvenient facts and only allow publication of their approved versions of many major issues.
It must be remembered that all genetic material in NZ is a toanga that belongs to TPM.
Auntie Helen's summation of John Campbell was one the money. Unlike a fine bottle of red wine he has not aged well and he is actually now even worse.
Māori Advisory committees eh? What a relief, everything’s bound to be fine then.
Well, that's one thing Clark did get right (actually at least two things - when one considers the Foreshore & Seabed legislation), her description of said "little creep" being very apt. As for the rest, it all depends on the protection measures?
“Public opinion globally and in New Zealand seems to have become more accepting of GM, although there are still plenty of critics”. Better believe it mate.
The Gene Technology Bill will allow gene edited microorganisms to be labelled as natural and sold to an unwitting public, writes Guy Hatchard. Metagenomic research demonstrates that synthetic foods are highly contaminated with toxic genetic sequences known to pose a danger to public health.
The main concerns of the GT Bill in regard to our food and all living plants and animals, are that there is no “precautionary principle” for those involved, in fact clause 187 attempts to protect those involved from civil and criminal liability. Why?
No controls, no traceability, no labelling, no ability to contain, our country becomes the laboratory (again), no meaningful consultation with farmers and exporters, our GE free marketing advantage will vanish, no cost benefit analysis, the damaging health effects through GE, known failures of GMO crops (as in India) equal the ruination of farmers as “control over the seed” is what GE is really all about.
And finally, what could possibly go wrong with the collusion of Government, Big Pharma and Biotech?
Genetic modification, especially todays with the CRISPR C9 DNA splicing tools is inherently risky & ever more available to do with less & less costs. As far as I know there is no way to “Undo” an organism if there are issues down the line. Nor is there any way to foretell long term problems without taking the time to see if any develop.
Wouldn’t even greater caution, especially for such an agricultural focused country be an imperative?
A decent screwup in this area easily could have our 90% export food market shutdown overnight.
I dunno, we want to bet the farm for grass that makes cows fart less?
Trial overseas sounds great. But I don’t think we want to become that overseas trail ground
Life is full of risk Anon 6.44. But without confronting risk there is no progress. Our species would still be gibbering in the tree-tops if we had sat around debating the risk posed by those dreadful sabre-tooth tigers. Genetic modification has been a fact of life since the dawn of time. It's what allowed us to come down from the trees. But Darwin shows it is entirely random in the natural world and our bodies are riddled with genetic deadends. Nevertheless as a species we have chosen to defy Darwin and intervene in the genetic modification of our food. It's called selective breeding and has been going on since man stopped being a hunter/gatherer. It allows the planet to feed a population in excess of 8 billion. Malthus was wrong. But it wouldn't have happened without the intervention of scientifically controlled genetic modification that took off in the 18th century. We now have the technology to modify organisms at the genetic level under strictly controlled conditions which arguably is much safer than relying on Darwinian principles. The hand-wringers are perfectly at liberty to revert to seventeenth century behaviour if makes them feel good. The feeling will not last long! Give me modern technology and risk management techniques any day of the week.
Just a wee brush-up on the history of bioscience, Jones Boy.
Charlie D knew nothing about heredity or genes (the word 'genes' didn't even exist yet). His Natural Selection model was centred solely on the phenotype. He suspected variation came about as a result of the action of the physical environment on the sex organs. With the rediscovery of Mendel's work, genetics was incorporated by the Darwinian framework. At first the understanding of the genetics side of the equation was overly simplistic (e.g. the 'hopeful monster' paradigm based on just a few mutations) but by the 1960s it had matured into what some call the Synthetic Theory or Neo-Darwinian conceptual framework.
'Defying' Natural Selection (to use your word) was arguably first through Sexual Selection, which can override the Natural one i.e. traits that enhance survival may not necessarily be selected for if they are selected against by the Sexual selective process. It's no use having survival potential if you can't pass it on.
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