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ERMA's GE Approval Heading Towards High Court
GE-Free NZ are seeking legal advice on a possible High Court challenge to ERMA's decision announced yesterday, to approve a 10-year trial of GE brassica.
The decision to allow the GE brassica field trial to proceed without prior human and animal safety testing has stunned many of the hundreds of submitters opposing the application, including scientists and agricultural experts who provided comprehensive evidence in submissions to ERMA.
ERMA's decision to make such considerations inadmissable as part of their review has resulted in an approval that is irresponsible and a waste of valuable taxpayers money.
"ERMA is not a 'seed development approval' authority, but a Risk Management one, and this decision shows that it is not capable of assessing long term risk," says Claire Bleakley of GE Free (NZ) in Food and Environment
Overseas research on Bt has shown it can be toxic to farm animals and has caused allergic reactions. But instead of safety checking the plants before spending time and money on field trials, the possibilty that they may be toxic, as was found with Australian research on GE peas, has been completely ignored.
It is an irony that ERMA has specifically prohibited the GE plants produced in the field trials from being used in testing for toxicity to animals or humans.
"We already know that this toxin will be produced at levels that exceed any previous levels for human consumption. So will the levels be high enough to kill someone?" asks Mrs Bleakley. "If it were open to human ingestion what would be its effects? This has been totally overlooked."
ERMA has again opened itself up to some serious questions about how it assesses risk safety by the fact that this trial did not at any time show the benefits of the research outweighed the risks.
“ERMA has yet again let down the public and chosen to approve an experiment without any consideration of the long term hazardous effects on the environment, human or animal health, community wellbeing, or New Zealand's brand reputation," says Mrs Bleakley.
"We will be looking very carefully at the decision to see if there is cause for a High Court action. There may also be need for fundamental legislative changes to the HSNO Act to prevent yet more nonsensical decisions by ERMA, only achieved by studiously ignoring alternative solutions to pest-control, lessons from overseas, and real-world future implications."
ENDS:
Claire Bleakley (06) 3089842; mob: 027 348 6731
Jon Carapiet- 0210 507 681
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GE-Free New Zealand 
