Browning Steffan: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrowning Steffan: General Debate[Sitting date: 02 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8483. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): This last weekend or just ahead of the weekend we heard that there was a new antibiotic-resistant form of campylobacter through at least three of the four main poultry suppliers in the North Island. The Green Party says that the Government needs to investigate the links between that antibiotic resistance and the rampant herbicide use in New Zealand as well as in the imported feed to that poultry and in other feedstocks.Glyphosate the active ingredient in Roundup and a number of other glyphosate-based herbicides is commonly sprayed on genetically engineered soy crops internationally and that is the vast volume of soy that is brought into New Zealand animal feedstocks. There was a quarter of a million tonnes of soy imported in 2014—nearly double that from 2010—and we have been battling campylobacter right through that time. Not so long ago Professor Jack Heinemann of Canterbury University and an international group came out with a research result that showed over three different herbicides and a range of different antibiotics levels of resistance or amplification in effectiveness of the antibiotics depending what. But it showed that there is a connection and a there is a change in antibiotic effectiveness from herbicide use.We are soaking in herbicides in this country our food chain is soaking in herbicides in this country and chicken would have to be one of the worst. I remember a few years ago when Inghams Enterprises was busy advertising its chicken as containing no GMOs and no synthetic additives etc. We showed through the Commerce Commission that it was totally out of order because at that stage at least 15 percent of its feedstock was genetically engineered soy and it will have risen since then. So too have all the other feed producers carried on using this sort of product.The Environmental Protection Authority here has approved 60 substances containing glyphosate under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act and the Ministry for Primary Industries with the agricultural compounds and veterinary medicines group has active registrations for 89 glyphosate products. We know that glyphosate is affecting the gut microbes in chicken and in other livestock and yet we have got this major risk to our health our consumers’ health and actually to our export markets. We know how critically important it is when there is something going wrong in the dairy industry that affects our markets. We knew when we thought there might have been a risk of botulinum how serious the ripples were that went out in our exports. Yet botulinum is a likely problem because of our increased use of glyphosate and others because of the suppression of beneficial microbes in the gut of both our ruminants and of course in our chickens. Glyphosate—as I wrap up—probably causes cancer. It is genotoxic at sub-lethal concentrations as a hormone disruptor. It is a reproductive negative and it contributes to digestive illness gut disruption and nutrient deficiencies.We need this Government to look at this seriously and not go around with its head in the sand in terms of how we are treating agriculture. There is another option; we must take it. Let us look to organics and seriously agroecological systems of farming moving away from pesticides.