Responding to comments from Australian Greens leader Senator Richard Di Natale that GM crops don’t appear to pose a significant risk to human health, Shaw said he “doesn’t get the sense there’s any appetite to review the Greens policy on GMOs as far as agriculture is concerned in NZ.”
“If anything, GE-free is the way to go for NZ,” Shaw said.
“If Australia did go down that route, that’s more reason for NZ not to.”
It didn’t make sense to compete with Australia on volume and as a niche producer NZ should be a supplier of high-quality food.
Di Natale said there was no concrete evidence on potential health harms to people and the bigger concern was “around issues of intellectual property".
It was “a bit simplistic to say GMOs are safe or they're not safe".
Australia allows genetically modified food crops of canola and cotton, which is crushed to produce cotton seed oil.
Food Standards Australia NZ allows manufacturers to use imported ingredients such as GM soybeans, corn, rice, potatoes and sugar beet.
Di Natale’s comments were picked up by Federated Farmers president Dr William Rolleston who said a rethink on opposition to GMOs in Australia should encourage the NZ Greens “to be equally open-minded”.
“It’s refreshing to see such an open-minded approach from the Australian Greens on what we see as a key issue for the agricultural sector and we encourage the NZ Green Party to also review their policy on genetic modification,” Rolleston said.
“Although no crops using GM are approved or grown here yet, this vitally important science is being used successfully in NZ,” he said.
“GM products such as food enzymes, medicines and animal feed are now commonplace.”
Di Natale’s comments don’t quite signal a change of heart for the Australian Green Party, which still carries the policy statement from the 2013 federal election campaign titled Standing Up On GMOs. It says genetically modified foods “have not been proven safe and the advertised benefits of GM crops are yet to be seen”.
“Crop yields have not increased but the use of pesticides on our food has,” it says.
“GMOs contaminate at all levels of the food chain but non-GM farmers must bear the cost of cleaning up GMO contamination and Australians still don't know if their food has GM ingredients.”
The statement carries a rider that it is “no longer up to date”.
Shaw and Di Natale met last year at the Paris climate summit as part of a sideline meeting of most of the world’s “green” parties, where the topic was better co-ordination.
European green parties, for example, had much more experience in being in a coalition government, unlike the NZ Greens, Shaw said.
