Tight security for GM-crop tests
By JANINE BENNETTS
The Press, 1 November 2006

Security will be in place to protect field tests for genetically modified vegetables in Canterbury if they go ahead next year.
The Environmental Risk Management Authority (Erma) yesterday received its first application in three years to field-test a GM crop at Lincoln.
In 2002, protesters trashed three years of research on GM potatoes by the Lincoln-based company Crop and Food Research.
The attack followed an incident in 1999 when the Wild Greens group destroyed a GM potato trial at Lincoln.
Crop and Food Research has applied to field-test brassicas ­ a class of vegetable including broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and forage kale ­ at Lincoln for 10 years.
The tests would see the brassicas modified for insect resistance with genes from bacillus thuringensis (Bt), a bacterium normally used as a toxin to repel insects.
Crop and Food Research spokeswoman Katherine Trought said the risk of sabotage was always a concern, but field tests had much higher security since the 2002 attack.
"The Erma regulations have changed (since 2002)," Trought said.
"They're much stricter in terms of test security."
Whenever field tests were done, the area was fenced off and had 24-hour surveillance.
Green Party MP and former Wild Greens spokesman Nandor Tanczos said he was no longer involved with the group, which he did not think was still active.
Anti-GM campaigners say the proposal is unnecessary and unsafe.
Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons said the proposed GM crops were unsafe because, if commercialised, cross-pollination would affect all other non-GM brassicas.
"That is an infringement on the rights of other growers to grow GM-free crops," she said.
"There will be the usual issues ­ that we don't know what other characteristics the plant will have, we don't know what it will do to the food quality, we don't know what it will do to the soil."
Three years ago, Crop and Food Research conducted controversial trials of GM onions.
Fitzsimons said she expected more submissions and a greater public outcry than for the 2003 tests.
Dr Elvira Dommisse, a former Crop and Research GM researcher, said the tests were unnecessary.
"I think you've just got to put things in perspective and ask if there's actually a need for it, and there isn't a need for it," Dommisse said.
Insects always evolved and would become resistant to Bt, defeating the purpose of the modification.
Dommisse said Bt used in overseas GM crops such as cotton left the people working with the plants with respiratory and skin problems.
Dr Mary Christey, the research leader for the brassicas work, said there was no scientific evidence that Bt used overseas had caused health problems or that insects had become resistant. She said the pesticide killed only caterpillars feeding on the GM plants producing Bt and left the plant virtually undamaged.
There were no plans to make a commercial product out of the tests, Christey said.
If the product were made commercially, strategies would be put in place to ensure insects did not become resistant to Bt.
Greenpeace campaign manager Cindy Baxter said Greenpeace was "utterly opposed" to the application. "It poses unnecessary and unquantified risks to New Zealand's economy, environment and public health and it has no benefit."
The application will be publicly notified today and public submissions will close on December 12.

Web Link: http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3846168a3600,00.htm