GE Release in New Zealand

by Bill Daly
Following a five-year moratorium the New Zealand Government is about to permit the release of experimental genetically engineered crops. The moratorium was largely the result of the influence of the Green Party in the previous government. The Greens though, strangely, have always opposed the holding of a public referenda on the release of GE even though the public, especially now, are overwhelming opposed. But opposition to the release is mounting and the Government may yet have a huge fight on its hands.

Last year a group of noted New Zealanders formed the Sustainability Council to preserve the country's GE-free status and they have the support of a good number of farmers who fear the effect on exports of the loss of that status. Presently statements opposing the release and calling for a further moratorium period are being made by other well-known people such as musicians and sportsmen. Even though the largest farmer group, Federated Farmers, still supports GE, many farmers are worried about its unknown effects and there is mounting suspicion that the economic benefits have been greatly exaggerated. Rural women's groups have consistently opposed GE.

The government is already under considerable pressure from farmers over its animal Flatulence Tax and may yet be forced to back away from that. Large numbers of farmers say they will not pay it or will lie about the number of stock they run.

The daily criticism about GE from numerous quarters is something the Government had hoped to avoid. Even the differences of opinion among the scientists is getting reasonable coverage. Radio New Zealand reported on its morning news on September 7th that Professor Saunders of Lincoln College said there would almost certainly be no financial benefits to farmers from genetic engineering. While the professor was not opposed to GE she said any increased production would only lead to tougher competition between food suppliers.

North Island scientist Robert Anderson PhD is a member of Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Genetics and is a leading opponent of GE and an excellent source of information. Over 20,000 copies of his little booklet Exploding the Myth of Genetic Engineering have been sold. There is no evidence that GE will actually provide greater food abundance. The Vatican is surely making a fool of itself by reportedly now supporting GE crops in the interests of solving world hunger. This has to be about the weakest argument so far put forward by the GE monopolists.

The world has been bursting at the seems for years because of food over production, caused, yes, in part because many consumers don't have enough purchasing power. But indebted farmers know only one way to keep the bank manager at bay and that is to produce to the maximum. But in many parts of the world there is fertile land not growing food, usually because of political mismanagement caused by centralised power, financial costs and debt which have driven traditional owners off the soil and wars which are waged with the foreign aid cheques of the big Western nations.

Aid agencies often report that even in famine hit countries there is often more than sufficient food, but distribution is prevented because of transportation difficulties and lack of money. GE won't put one extra cent into the hands of the starving. Rhodesia was once a significant food exporter. The same land is still there. But under the corrupt Marxist Mugabe who was put into power by the British and US governments, along with the connivance of ignorant do-gooder politicians in New Zealand and elsewhere, the people there are now starving. What difference will GE make to the once fertile Rhodesian farms which are now controlled by cruel bullies with guns?

The same mindset that gave us 'African Liberation' wants to create a 'scientific', computer organised world. Only it is not science in the real Baconian sense which recognises truths and natural laws. It is a soulless, rationalistic anti-science bereft of any sense of the world and societies as having an integrated and organic and dynamic unity centred in the Creator and subject to His natural laws.

Whether they recognise it or not the GE opponents are a healthy human reaction to the soulless elites that gave us mass medication and mass-produced junk food and high-rise concrete slums and weapons of mass destruction and central planning. Like the fluoridation issue, the best argument against GE is probably the simple one that people must always have the natural right to choose what food they eat.

The New Zealand government is banning smoking from pubs and restaurants because it claims that non-smokers should not have their environs polluted. If they were consistent then GE would have to be banned since it is known that it will be near impossible to prevent cross pollination between GE and non-GE crops.