GE pasture trial concerns

Agricultural scientists genetically engineering clover and ryegrass to feed sheep and cattle are "softening up" the public for an application to trial GE pastures on New Zealand farms, says a lobbyist critical of some uses of the technology.

One consortium, the Pastoral Genomics group comprising AgResearch, Fonterra, Meat and Wool, DairyNZ and the Deer Industry New Zealand is preparing to apply to regulators for a conditional release of GE forage species, said Sustainability Council executive director Simon Terry.

But if the GE grass was released into the environment - even for a field trial - it posed the risk of the altered genes flowing on into existing pastures growing conventional grasses, said Mr Terry. The council has previously expressed concerned about some GE technologies being used outside laboratory containment.

Science academy, the Royal Society, today released an "emerging issues" discussion paper on GE forage plants, noting that it "has no intentions whatsoever of influencing ultimate decisions on use or not", according to Stephen Goldson, the society's vice-president of biological and life sciences.

Dr Goldson is AgResearch's chief science strategist and a science strategy adviser to Prime Minister John Key, but said - wearing his Royal Society hat - that the academy wanted to inform and update the debate.

The paper noted GE clover and ryegrass are being promoted in some quarters as "cisgenic" - engineered without using genes from other species - which the biotechnology sector hopes may make the meat and milk from animals grazed on them more acceptable in some markets.

At least two major research consortiums are preparing to seek the release of GE pasture plants: PGG Wrightson has been working with Australian scientists on GE ryegrass, while Fonterra and AgResearch have worked with other partners on both clover and ryegrass, and Fonterra has funded its own research into ryegrass.

One of the co-authors of the paper, Lincoln University's Caroline Saunders told journalists in a briefing that consumers in the United States and European Union - the high end of the market for many NZ food exports - were resistant to even GE traits perceived as beneficial.

Michael Dunbier. of Pastoral Genomics, told the briefing that the first GE pasture plants offered for commercial release were likely to be ones engineered to be drought resistant, but estimated the earliest commercialisation could be in 2017.

Rival researchers developing a GE "super-grass" in Australia for New Zealand seed company PGG Wrightson have predicted they could have one ready for commercial release in 2013 to potentially boost the carbohydrates in ryegrass and make it more easily digested.

Mr Terry said that if such pastures were allowed in New Zealand by the Environmental Risk Management Authority (Erma), they would effectively be one of the nation's first uncontained GE releases, because it could be difficult to contain GE plants capable of cross-breeding with other grasses or clovers. He said the paper was softening up the public for such an application.

"I think it was a pretty clear steer in that direction," he told NZPA, "It was a political document dressed up as independent science."

Mr Terry said the society's paper provided a diversity of views, but the framing of the document suggested a lack of even-handedness.

It was talking about GE grasses and their ability to cause changes - such as delivering higher levels of water soluble carbohydrates, more efficient protein use and reduced nitrogen waste - but presented such traits as apparently novel, when similar effects were available from conventional "high sugar" grasses.

- NZPA