Fair legislation requires good process

The changes it wants to make are on how we, as a country, manage the risks of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on-farm and in the supply chain.

Whatever your views are on GMOs, there’s a lot at stake. That’s why 93% of Feds members, who took part in a poll last year, said they want a conversation about GMOs.

But Government is rushing the bill through, without taking the time to get input from you and I - the people who will have to make it work on the ground.  

So, what would Government’s new Gene Technology Bill mean for us? In a nutshell, more paperwork and more compliance costs just to stand still  - with the added risk of trading away our GE-free competitive advantage. 

We’ve been looking at some aspects of the Bill. Government wants to relieve scientists and GM seed companies of the responsibility to prove that there any economic benefits from releasing a GMO, or to account for the costs that will fall on farmers and supply chains. This goes against the advice of the Ministry with the most experience in the international marketplace – the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade – which thinks economic assessment of GMOs is necessary because of “the unpredictable nature of the international trading environment where gene technology has historically been controversial" (including in New Zealand).

Government also wants to fully deregulate some new GMOs: ones made using certain types of gene editing. This means that scientists and GM seed companies won’t need to account for where their GMOs are - and where they shouldn’t be – let alone risk assess them. It will be on non-GM producers to figure out how to keep them out of our fields and the supply chain.

When it comes to the on-farm and supply chain practicalities, there’s no detail. Government says it will work up regulations to deal with this later. For now, we're being told not to worry, because GM and non-GM farming systems ‘coexist’ in other countries. But GM pasture grass systems haven’t been commercialised overseas, so there’s no experience or confidence to draw from there.  Of concern, Wellington is also now telling us that GM perennial ryegrass won’t spread!

On the compliance-cost front, Government makes no bones about the fact that proceeding with its plan will mean "additional costs” for farmers who supply non-GM market demand.  This is a sizeable chunk of the farming community. It even acknowledges that these costs will be “high impact”, but doesn’t seem fussed about where the costs will fall and hasn’t produced anything to give us confidence that the costs will minimised or fairly shared.

There’s also the issue that a lot of us are worried about and want handled carefully: the implications of surrendering the value of the GM Free status of our productive lands, the impact on our national brand and consumer attitudes to GMOs.

Given how heavily market issues have defined uptake of GMOs to date, you’d expect Government would have done a fair bit of work to understand how its plan would impact us on-farm, in the supply chain and in our export markets.  It acknowledges that under its plan, “New Zealand will no longer be able to rely on GMO freedom to give assurance that traded goods are GMO free when they need to be.” But it hasn’t made any serious attempt to understand the markets or the economic impacts of changing our position.   

We are very conscious of our responsibilities as farmers and the pressures that our sector is under to meet Scope 3 carbon commitments. But there are hard-edged trade-offs we need to be able to work through carefully. For now, they are between our current, established value proposition for non-GM, pasture fed farming and the release of experimental GM lines that may (or may not) stack up in reducing carbon. New GM ryegrasses are still many years away from being able to help us reduce our emissions at scale and may not be accepted in our high-value markets.  This, when we have non-GM tools now that can help us reduce our carbon footprint. Under the Government’s proposal, a GM crop could be released without the strategic analysis which is so critical to our market positioning as a sector.

So where does this leave us?

We know farmers are absolutely up for a conversation about GMOs.  This rush job is not the conversation that we deserve.  It’s not good enough to say that farmers should just write a submission. It's hard for us to do that – whether through representative bodies or individually – particularly with such a complex piece of legislation and so little detail on the how the new regime will work on-farm and in the supply chain.

The rush is all of Government’s making, so we’re looking to Wellington to extend the submission period and carry out the necessary analysis so we all understand the impacts the proposals will have on farming and potentially New Zealand’s export economy. Without adequate consultation in its current format, we know we will be the one’s wearing the cost of this Bill whichever way it’s looked at.

Mike and Ruth Williams

Sheep & Beef farmers, Banks Peninsula

Mike and Ruth Williams are part of a group of concerned farmers and growers who want to make sure there’s a fair deal and consultation on GM issues.  For more information go to www.concernedfarmersnz.org