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Tuesday 27 November 2007 (Updated on Mon 10 Dec 07 at 1pm AEDT)

RAPID ROUNDUP

Moratorium on GM food crops lifted in NSW and Victoria - Experts respond

The Victorian and New South Wales state governments today announced their decision to lift a moratorium on growing genetically-modified (GM) food crops.

NSW Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald has announced the state is ending its four-year moratorium on GM canola crops, making GM canola available for the 2008 planting season.   

Also today, the Victorian government has announced it has accepted the findings of a report by Sir Gustav Nossal giving the all clear for GM canola to be grown when a four year moratorium lapses in Febuary next year.

Click here to read the NSW Dept of Primary Industries announcement

Click here for a link to the Victorian Government website including the latest report

Below, scientists with expertise in this area discuss today’s announcement.  Feel free to use these quotes in your stories.  If you need assistance tracking down an expert, contact the AusSMC on 08 8207 7415 or email us.    Any further quotes will also be posted here as they are received.

Click here to read a joint statement received from a group of agricultural scientists across a range of institutions in reaction to today's announcement. The group consists of:

Professor Rick Roush, Dr David Tribe & Dr Rob Norton from the University of Melbourne
Professor Jim Pratley from Charles Sturt University
Professor Stephen Powles from the University of Western Australia
Dr Christopher Preston from the University of Adelaide
Professor Mark Tester from the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics and the University of Adelaide

Also, read comments from:

Professor Mark Westoby is a plant ecologist in the Department of Biological Science at Macquarie University.

Professor Mike Jones is Head of the Plant Biotechnology Research Group ,Professor of Agricultural Biotechnology and Director of the WA State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre (SABC) at Murdoch University in WA.

Adrian Gibbs is a retired professor, formerly from the School of Biological Sciences at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra and fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

Professor Steve Powles is from the University of Western Australia (plant biology) and Chairman of the Gene Technology Advisory Committee (GTAC).

Associate Professor Ray Rose is from the University of Newcastle’s School of Environmental and Life Sciences.

Dr Maarten Stapper is a farming systems agronomist who spent 24 years with the CSIRO. He now works as an independent consultant assisting farmers.

Dr Thomas J (TJ) Higgins is Chief Research Scientist and Deputy Chief of CSIRO Plant Industry.

Professor Mark Westoby is a plant ecologist in the Department of Biological Science at Macquarie University:

"Canola GM'ed for herbicide resistance isn't an irretrievable risk for natural ecosystems, and so should not have been blocked in the first place, not on GM grounds anyhow. That's because if herbicide-resistance genes were to escape, they could not be a selective advantage in natural vegetation.

Of course there are other risks. There's a risk that more herbicides would be used, but the safety of herbicide regimes is covered through other legislation. Any risk there might have been that proteins produced would threaten human health was covered through food safety legislation, and wasn't distinctive to GMs. There is a very substantial probability that the herbicide-resistance genes will escape into weeds (Near-certainty actually, the key weeds of canola are close relatives of the crop). But that's a problem for the profitability of the technology, not for natural ecosystems. Generally, if a problem arises with any of those things, the decision can be reversed, which means that much higher probabilities something may happen can be accepted.

The serious and distinctive risks of GM are that escaping genes will make some irretrievable change in natural ecosystems. And that's only an issue for genes that might just possibly turn out to confer a big advantage in natural populations."

Professor Mike Jones is Head of the Plant Biotechnology Research Group ,Professor of Agricultural Biotechnology and Director of the WA State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre (SABC) at Murdoch University in WA:

“This is a far sighted and necessary decision to keep Australia at the forefront of science and its application to benefit farmers and society. Australian farmers are already ten years behind their competitors in North and South America, with India and China also rapidly expanding their area of GM crops.

This decision will also pave the way for society to benefit from more healthy food, that will help reduce obesity, improve cardiovascular health, improve bowel health and reduce Type II diabetes.

GM technologies will help to solve major issues confronting the world – between 1950 and 2000 the world population doubled from 3 to 6 billion, and it will be more than 9 billion by 2050. We must produce more food from less land in a sustainable way, reduce pressure to crop marginal lands to maintain biodiversity for future generations, meet the additional demands to produce biofuels from plants as availability of fossil fuels decline, and be able to anticipate and respond rapidly to climate change. GM crops will be required to meet these challenges.

This action by the Victorian Government will influence decisions to be taken by the other States, and I expect that GM Moratoria will topple like dominoes over the next few years. In five or ten years time we will all be wondering what all the fuss was about, since the majority of the world’s staple crops are likely to be GM.”



Adrian Gibbs is a retired professor, formerly from the School of Biological Sciences at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra and fellow of the Australian Academy of Science:

“I’m in favour of any technology used to increase the value of farms provided it’s done safely. What’s required is proper testing done in Australia by Australian scientists and done by people who don’t have a conflict of interest, who aren’t going to be making money out of it. There are repeated claims that GM canola will out-yield non GM canola but there’s no published Australian research that proves that.

We also need to have safety checks. The claim is that it is perfectly safe but again there are very few tests done and these have been very short term, and the food made from these crops are not labelled. We have lots of good scientists in Australia – we need to be doing good science.

The approval process is one of paper approval – the approval authorities get the information from overseas and it just goes through as paperwork.

There is only one experiment I know of and it’s endlessly quoted – it was funded by Monsanto and had no controls. The checks on the safety of laying those genes out into weeds with similar genetic structures has not been done here at all. In fact the level of safety checking in all these areas is about as good as that done before cane toads and rabbits were introduced into the country.”



Professor Steve Powles is from the University of Western Australia (plant biology) and Chairman of the Gene Technology Advisory Committee (GTAC):

“The OGTR has some time ago fully scrutineered GM canola and has completely approved transgenic GM canola for growing in Australia on all health and environmental safety grounds It’s only the state governments that have prevented them from being commercialised.

These canolas have a ten year history in countries like Canada and have been fully approved on all health and safety aspects and experimental OGTR trials have already been completed in a number of states.”



Associate Professor Ray Rose is from the University of Newcastle’s School of Environmental and Life Sciences:

"This is a great boost for Australian agriculture including both farmers and consumers. Lifting the ban enables new breeding technologies to be used for the benefit of the environment and human health and there is a great potential in both these areas. It will allow scientists and plant breeders to use this technology to improve the breeding process to help deal with our current environmental problems particularly given the situation in Australia where we have to deal with climate change and a severe drought.

In health terms the more immediate benefits are the decreased use of pesticides and chemicals while longer term it opens up the possibility we could develop plants that are able to capture more Co2, use less water and overcome degraded land. Perhaps now we can move beyond the narrow focus of the past.

One of the strengths in Australia that there is a really thorough process of testing and monitoring the introduction of Gm crops and we must continue to have the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator supervising the process.

If we introduce technology carefully and safely it can do a lot of good. It is now up to all the scientists involved in this area to bring that to fruition."

Dr Maarten Stapper is a farming systems agronomist who spent 24 years with the CSIRO. He now works as an independent consultant assisting farmers:

“The moratorium was right because the safety of GM hasn’t been proven either for human health or the environment. Testing for the environment needs to be done over 10 years and health testing should be done over at least four generations for example with mice and rats fed GM food.

At the moment 81% of GM varieties in the world are herbicide tolerant so farmers can spray their crops and kill the weeds but not kill the crops. It’s lazy farming. This causes problems with herbicide-resistant plants and new diseases. The chemicals in insect- resistant GM plants kill insects but they also kill the microbes in soil. The GM solutions are developed by gene technologists in laboratories over the short term. They play with genes and don’t get the whole picture. –The environmental climate the genes end up in is much more complex than a laboratory. We already know that genes switch themselves on and off according to the environment they find themselves in. These crops need to be tested in the field for 10 years before they can be said to be safe.”

Dr Thomas J (TJ) Higgins is Chief Research Scientist and Deputy Chief of CSIRO Plant Industry:

“This is very good news. Farmers now have a choice about what kind of canola they want to grow. I think it is also great news for gene technology science and innovation in Australia. Scientists can move ahead with some certainty now whereas over the last four years the research has gone ahead much more slowly than it might otherwise have gone. I think we can now look forward to being able to do gene technology research to not only produce GM plants but even more importantly we are able to do the more basic research to help all kinds of plant breeding, conventional breeding as well as GM.“