|
Gene Ethics Network (July 2002)
********************** EASY AS PIE, WITH IDEAS TO ASSIST YOU PLEASE FORWARD TO YOUR OWN NETWORKS Dear Friends Monsanto has sent a proforma letter to many canola growers around Australia. It asks them to make a submission to the Office of Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) in support of the release of herbicide tolerant GE canola. This Roundup Ready variety will create havoc by contaminating GE-free crops, inducing herbicide tolerance in weeds and native relatives, and leaving chemical residues in the environment and food. We ask you to counter Monsanto's push by also sending a letter to the OGTR as soon as possible, preferably by Monday 15 July 2002. The present applications by Monsanto and Aventis are for field trials but Monsanto already has its application lodged for commercial release next year. This will be assessed over the next 6 months. Please use the proforma below if you want to or, better still, express your own views and concerns about proposed GE herbicide tolerant canola trials and general release in a short letter. More information on the proposals is available at Bob Phelps GeneEthics Network ............................................................................ July 12, 2002 Office of Gene Technology Regulator MDP 54, PO Box 100 Woden ACT 2600 FAX: (02) 6271 4202 EMAIL: PHONE: 1800 181 030 Dear Regulator, Re: Proposed licences to release genetically engineered herbicide tolerant canola Applications DIR 010 (Aventis) and DIR 011 (Monsanto) I urge you to reject Aventis and Monsanto's licence applications DIR 010 and DIR 011 which propose to trial genetically engineered herbicide tolerant canola at over 100 sites in four states, on the following grounds: Fitness of the Applicants to hold licences Sections 57 (2) and 58 of the Gene Technology Act 2000 require you to satisfy yourself of the applicants' suitability to hold licences. By their breaches of laws, guidelines and regulations in Australia and many other countries, Aventis, Monsanto, and their parent companies Bayer and Pharmacia, have shown themselves as unfit to hold licences for the release of genetically engineered organisms. I ask you to fully explore the behaviour of all these corporations and their officers everywhere in the world and to fully report your findings. On these grounds, I urge you to reject their licence applications and to provide full reasons for doing so. Environment: o I want you to apply the precautionary principle to assessments of the impacts of genetically engineered canola. The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act mandates the application of this principle. The principle should be applied to all applications to release genetically engineered organisms because, once released from the laboratory they may be impossible to recall. Where there is uncertainty and inadequate scientific information, as there is with GE canola, you should err on the side of caution and reject the applications. o The applicants propose to trial their crops at more locations than necessary to establish the agronomic viability of these crops. Their intention appears to be to spread their crops as widely as possible. This is against the public interest. o Genetically engineered canola is a high risk crop for pollen mediated gene flow from crop to crop and from canola to wild and weedy relatives. The impacts of commercial use in North America should be assessed, as well as the experimental evidence. o The spillage or wind borne transfer of GE herbicide tolerant canola seed into important environments such as roadsides, where remnant vegetation survives, would be a significant environmental impact. o Canola resistant to Roundup, Basta or triazine (from TT canola) would be problematic in natural and remnant environments. Multiresistant superweeds, tolerant to all these weedicides would require a cocktail of potent, persistent and costly chemicals to control. The weeds themselves, and use of chemical cocktails to control them, would have major impacts on land and water quality, and biodiversity. o Canadian experience with commercial canola shows its weediness to be a present problem after only five years of growing the GE varieties. Canola is now the 13th most common weed in Canada and its control in both rural and urban environments is an environmental disaster, as well as being expensive. You should assess the commercial impacts overseas, not only the experimental evidence. On all these grounds I strongly urge you to reject these licence applications. Public Health o I am not satisfied that the long term health impacts of foods produced using gene technology are fully understood or known. There is no premarket human testing of GE foods and in the absence of labelling the impacts cannot be monitored or identified. o ANZFA approvals for 21 different varieties of GE foods derived from six crops - soy, corn, canola, cottonseed, potato and sugarbeet - ignore the new, high risk process of GE production. The consensus reached by ANZFA and other regulators is based on the concept of substantial equivalence which is not scientifically sound. On all these grounds I strongly urge you to reject these licence applications. Farmers' Livelihoods and Taxpayer costs o Neighbours are not advised of the location of the proposed trials. This information is unavailable until the companies are ready to plant, giving nearby farmers no opportunity to avoid pollution of their crop by planting wheat or some other unrelated species. o Genetically engineered canola will destroy Australia's access to GE-free markets in Asia and Europe and reduce Australian competitiveness in global commodity markets. o Genetically engineered canola will result in more weeds and troublesome volunteer plants in farmers' fields and disturbed environments such as easements and roadsides. This will result in higher weed control costs for farmers, the community and local government. o GE canola volunteers in crop rotations would create expensive management problems for farmers, increasing the price of food to shoppers. o The contamination of all canola varieties with foreign genes will mean higher chemical costs for conventional GE free growers and loss of certification for organic farmers. o Contamination with foreign genes may bring neighbours into court as adversaries because licensees would not accept responsibility for foreign gene contamination from approved commercial crops. o If licensed to do these trials, the applicants may sue conventional farmers who reuse seed containing foreign patented genes, acquired through environmental processes such as pollen transfer or seed spillage. This is unjust and not in the public interest. On all these grounds I strongly urge you to reject these licence applications. Yours sincerely, Signature : .............................................................. Name : ............................................................. Address : ............................................................. .................................... Postcode ................ Gene Ethics Network Australia home page (New window!) |