Ewen-Street Ian: General Debates 
Ewen-Street Ian: General Debates 
[Volume:617;Page:12855] 
IAN EWEN-STREET (Green) 
: 
 At question time today the Associate Minister for Biosecurity confirmed that the Government has no policy on the pulling out of genetically engineered crops. Well I think she did—I could not really understand what she was saying. Maybe she did not confirm that the Government does have a policy. When I asked her whether it was going to pull out the crops she said: “Oh no that would be a breach of our zero tolerance policy.” When I said: “OK you do pull them up.” she said: “No we’re not going to pull them up because we haven’t got a policy for compensating farmers.” She used to be indecisive but now she is not so sure. 
I think it is really extraordinary that the Government does not have a policy on something as important as this. It is making it up as it goes along. It is trying to make the policy fit the facts  
post factum 
—after it has happened. I thought policies were supposed to be a set of principles. 
“Corngate” occurred in 2000. The cover-up was exposed in 2002. It is simply not good enough to get to this time and the Government still does not have a policy much less a plan of action. What the Government must do and soon is legislate for strict liability for GE companies that contaminate other crops. We need to be able to sue laboratories that misreport results so that we do not have the taxpayer propping up corporates all the time. We do not need the New Zealand taxpayer paying for the negligence of overseas corporates. 
When Biogenetic Services—the company that did the testing—was certified in 2002 it passed its tests. When it was certified in 2004 it failed its tests. I want to know what happened in the meantime. Did the tests change? Did the certification change? Did we ask the right questions in 2002? Has the laboratory changed? Have its processes changed? I do not know and I am sure the Minister does not know. 
The Minister seems to be quite comfortable with the idea that there will be contamination of crops. But what she does not seem to appreciate is that crops are living reproducing things. So if one has a contamination as Larry Baldock said of half a rugby field this year it will grow reproduce and get bigger—that is surprising. So in the future the contamination will be much bigger. How does one keep a low contamination rate if the contamination keeps getting bigger? Nobody has ever answered that question satisfactorily. 
The fundamental question in all of this is: why is the Government continuing to prop up this failed technology when it is clearly in full-scale retreat around the world? Let me give members several examples from just the last few weeks. Yesterday Monsanto that great white hope for genetic engineering withdrew its genetically engineered wheat from commercialisation because of overwhelming resistance from consumers and farmers. Last week New Zealand’s Life Sciences Network which was established to promote genetic engineering in this country was disbanded. To read from its own press release it was disbanded “because it does not have enough subscribers.” 
Last month Western Australia banned the growing of all GE crops “to preserve its markets.” The American state of Vermont the good old USA the home of genetic engineering passed legislation making biotechnology corporates liable for any problems arising from the use of GE technology and thereby effectively banned the growing of GE crops in that state. That is what is happening in the rest of the world. Far from being at the forefront of this technology it looks as though we will be left high and dry when the tide goes out and believe me the tide is going out very quickly at the moment. 
There are a number of issues that we need to get our heads around before we embrace GE in this country. I have said them before but they are worth repeating. The main one for everybody but for farmers in particular is economics. Ours is a market-driven economy. It is incumbent on us to provide what the market demands. The market signals in this case are crystal-clear.