Playing with fire

Regardless of which side of the genetic engineering fence one finds oneself, or indeed even if one sits astride it, the High Court ruling at Wellington on Friday that the Environmental Risk Management Authority (Erma) had erred in receiving applications for determination under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996 (HSNO) should be welcomed.

For what the ruling appears to reveal is that the careful case-by-case assessment of the risks and opportunities of individual applications, as anticipated by the Royal Commission into GE in 2001, and by subsequent governments, had been jettisoned in favour of a somewhat "wholesale" approach.

On reflection, even ardent supporters of GE must realise that however inconvenient to swift scientific endeavour this might prove, it is hardly a position likely to endear it to both agnostics and opponents who make up a good bulk of the public.

For the former, at the very least the prospect raises issues of requisite degrees of caution, and for the latter, it simply fans the embers of distrust, suspicion and long-held conviction: that science and its gatekeepers, hell-bent on Frankensteinian enterprise, simply cannot resist the temptation to play with fire.

The case in question was brought by the lobby group GE-Free New Zealand against Erma and Crown Research Institute AgResearch.

AgResearch last year made four applications for the laboratory testing of human and monkey cell lines and smaller species of GE laboratory animals, and the development of GE cows, buffalo, sheep, pigs, goats, llamas, alpacas, deer and horses.

It submitted that it wanted the livestock to produce antigens, biopharmaceuticals, enzymes, hormones and other products with possible health benefits and commercial applications.

It said it was making a "suite" of applications to obtain all the possible approvals it might need for research, and animal breeding to target production of high-value proteins in milk.

The problem with this approach, as has been pointed out by opponents, is that the chances of the individual proposals being properly scrutinised within such a suite were considerably reduced.

Justice Denis Clifford appeared to agree: "On balance, therefore, and whilst I recognise the strength of Erma's response to GE Free's applications, I have concluded in this instance the applications are simply too generic to enable the risk assessment called for by HSNO to be meaningfully undertaken," he said in his judgement.

He ordered that any decisions to accept applications be set aside and that Erma stop hearing and assessing any further applications.

The immediate effect of the court battle is that AgResearch's application to import genetically engineered material and livestock has been restricted.

A further repercussion is that the spotlight is turned once again on an issue that has potentially wide-reaching consequences for New Zealand.

Some researchers and scientists will argue that work in this field is at the cutting edge of modern bio-genetics and biotechnology; further, that the comparative advantage to the country's primary produce industries cannot be underestimated.

But in a parting of the ways, many others - scientists, agronomists, economists and marketers - are forceful in their position that New Zealand has more to lose than to gain if its "green" image as a producer and supplier of wholesome foods is contaminated by the spectre of GE produce.

The world movement in natural and organic foods is on the increase.

Consumer concerns over the ingredients of foodstuff continue to rise.

Last week, Fonterra was advertising in agricultural publications its imperative to attract more dairy farmers to organic milk production to meet increasing demand in export markets.

Unfortunately, as episodes in the past - such as GE corn being accidentally released in Gisborne in 2000 - and the experience of overseas field trials and commercial cropping indicate, it does appear to be a case of all or nothing with commercial application of genetic engineering of animals and crops.

Once out, it is hard, if not impossible, to put the genie back in the bottle.

And beyond the immediate arguments about the best way forward with our livestock, crops and other produce, there is the damage cross-pollination of a raft of GE experiments could do to our tourism industry.

Caution remains the necessary watchword with this still-controversial science, which is why the HSNO Act exists and why applications under it must be considered individually and with utmost care.