MP Asks "What's In Our Food?"
- Paul Bensemann - 2/10/98

Paul Bensemann is Press Secretary to the Green MPs' in New Zealand.

Last month, Parliament threw out draft laws which would have allowed consumers to know, for example, whether animal genes were in their vegetables. Green Co-Leader and MP Rod Donald says New Zealand lost one opportunity to protect itself from genetically modified food, but there's still time to act.

Sometimes I wonder, with tongue firmly in cheek of course, if Parliament's Bellamys restaurant is force-feeding MPs genetically-modified food. I say this because I just can't understand why the country's leaders voted out a perfectly logical and non-threatening piece of legislation recently, which asked that labels be put on genetically modified food, so people could have a choice on whether to buy such food or not.

The Food (Genetic Modification Information) Amendment Bill, drafted by Alliance MP Phillida Bunkle, gained widespread support from individual MPs but when it came to the crunch, after pressure from Prime Minister Jenny Shipley on her MPs - and who knows what's in her muesli - the bill was lost by just one vote.

With the Government now shoring up its support by doing deals with various centre-right independents, the chances of Phillida's bill or a similar one getting a second chance before the next election seem slim, without a public outcry of support.

And there's a serious aspect to my seemingly-flippant comments about Jenny's Bellamys' muesli. Without labelling, New Zealanders have no idea whether they are eating genetically-modified products or not.

Last month British MPs banned genetically-engineered crops from restaurants and bars in the House of Commons. I doubt whether we could do the same here as Bellamys couldn't say whether its food came from exclusively non-genetically-modified sources. In any case why should MPs get to eat real food when everyone else has to put up with genetically tampered organisms.

Many large international companies have denied selling such products, but it is difficult without government help to determine how, for example, seeds have been developed.

The problem for New Zealand is that without labelling at the retail level, international firms can develop and peddle genetically modified seeds here, and growers can use the seed with the knowledge that the resultant crop can be sold secretly among naturally-developed equivalents.

At present, for example, Northern Hemisphere scientists are trying to "improve and increase" fruit production by transplanting the cold-resistant genes of an arctic fish into strawberries.

Meanwhile the Economist of June 13, 1998, hardly a rabid environmental organ, explains in a feature article how two dozen varieties of genetically modified seeds, with genes from who-knows-what animals, have been approved for planting in the United States.

Another respected publication, the Guardian Weekly, said on August 16 this year that four genetically-modified foods were on sale in Britain: tomato paste, vegetarian cheese, maize and soya.

There's a serious lack of knowledge on how such genetically-altered material could affect people in the long-term. But big international companies responsible for genetically modified seeds have vocal backers, including from within health and agricultural organisations in New Zealand.

I have witnessed such support before. We saw it with nuclear radiation. We saw it with DDT. We saw it with 2,4,5-T. We saw it with thalidomide. In each of those cases the authorities who were supposed to know and who were supposed to have our well-being at heart put us wrong. Consumers these days are more discerning and sceptical. They want to be able to make their own decisions, and they have a right to the information to enable them to do so.

There are environmental concerns as well. For example, natural vegetation could be changed for all time by cross-fertilisation from genetically-modified crops.

Yes, people have been genetically modifying plants and animals for centuries by cross-breeding animals and plants that can naturally breed together. That is a totally different technology from artificially taking genes out of one organism and putting them into another organism - an organism that could not possibly cross with that first organism in nature - in a scatter-gun, random way.

An argument advanced by the Government against Phillida's bill was that labelling is unworkable. But I can pick up food packets in the supermarket which show what percentage of minerals, what additives, and what colouring agents they contain. Why is it possible to label foods in that way, but it is not possible to label as to whether they are genetically engineered?

We have been told also that labelling for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is a trade measure - that it is contrary to the World Trade Organization's rules. In effect we are being told that food safety is a trade barrier, and that if we have to choose between safe food and trade, then safe food just has to go!

There are plenty of countries already in the process of making food labelling a requirement. We ought to be joining those countries. We ought to be one of the advocates for food safety to ensure that the World Trade Organization recognises the right of nations to protect their citizens and to give them the information they need, not joining the other side, as New Zealand has consistently done, and arguing for free trade to be put ahead of every social and environmental value that people in this country hold dear.

New Zealand right now is probably relatively GMO (genetically-modified organisms) free, but there's already some evidence, for example, of tomatoes being sold here from genetically-engineered seed.

Before too many other genetically modified products arrive or are developed here, there's a window of opportunity to loudly restate our clean, green international image and to back non-GMO growers. We should, for example, give more support to those behind our $24 million organic export industry. We need to say no, as a people, and a parliament, to genetically engineered food.

This article is reprinted from Presto magazine (available on dead tree in Christchurch) with permission from both Presto as publishers and Paul Benseman as author.