Kedgley Sue: General Debates 
Kedgley Sue: General Debates 
[Volume:609;Page:6574] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 The news of the collapse of the multinational company PPL Therapeutics and its decision to pull the plug on most of its genetic engineering (GE) experiments around the world including those on its farm in the Waikato where it is breeding up to 3000 GE sheep—sheep with a human gene inserted into them—raises many questions. The company has said in recent press releases that it will be liquidating all of its operations including its New Zealand operation but it has also said that it may just be putting its research on hold. The Environmental Risk Management Authority has said in response to that that if the farm were to close the sheep would be destroyed—specifically they would be incinerated all 3000 of them or maybe 4000 because there are 4000 sheep altogether. But then the authority went on to say that the company had not notified it of what it will do with the sheep. 
This raises questions—questions that we asked the Minister in the House and she refused to answer—as to what exactly is the status of this operation and what exactly will happen to those sheep. When does the approval for PPL Therapeutics’ transgenic sheep trial end? Is there any time limit or any limit on the time that PPL Therapeutics can keep its project on hold while it decides what to do? If the company puts the project on hold indefinitely what will happen to the 4000 sheep in the meantime? The sheep are breeding; they are about to breed some more within the next month. Is an Environmental Risk Management Authority approval for a project specific to the applicant or can it be transferred willy-nilly to other entities such as perhaps AgResearch which has fifty-fifty ventures with PPL Therapeutics for various other GE projects? The Minister implied in her answer today that another company could quite simply take over the operation and it could continue. I think that is an extraordinary comment or statement that has very significant implications. 
Who will be responsible for carrying out controls and for disposing of the 4000 animals by killing and incinerating them in the event that the company just goes bankrupt does a runner for example? Why was there not a requirement that PPL Therapeutics and any other company engaged in this sort of research provide a clean-up bond to be used in the event that it went into liquidation and could not carry out all the controls imposed on its approval and as would be required for example of a mining operation? These are important questions and they have implications not just for this particular experiment for these 3000 genetically engineered sheep that are ambling around in the Waikato but also for all other applications to the Environmental Risk Management Authority. We will be pursuing these questions until we get answers. 
Some more fundamental questions are raised as well. Why was this massive experiment involving placing human genes into thousands of sheep to produce a protein in their milk allowed to take place before the protein had even been tested to see whether it was medically successful—before clinical trials had demonstrated that the human protein the sheep were going to produce was a valid and useful treatment? Why did the Environmental Risk Management Authority not require the applicant to wait until clinical trials of the particular protein that were being conducted in the UK and the USA had been successfully concluded before it gave permission for the company to breed such a large-scale manufacturing flock? How could the authority say that the benefits of this project outweighed the risks when the benefits had not even been demonstrated? They have now of course been shown to be completely illusory. If the authority had taken that precautionary approach as it is supposed to do under its mandate we would not be facing the prospect of 4000 sheep in a project that has failed being incinerated. 
Other questions include why the authority gave permission for PPL Therapeutics to breed a manufacturing flock—and the permission was for up to 10000 transgenic sheep—as a so-called field trial when it demonstrably was not a field trial.