Tasmanian feature: GM ban impacts on local bio

A moratorium by the Tasmanian government on genetically modified organisms has the potential to seriously impact future biotechnology research in the state, especially in the agricultural sector.

The moratorium was put into place in July 2000 and is up for review in mid-2003.

The government has cited Tasmania's "clean and green" image and concerns for the environmental impact of GMOs as reasons for the moratorium.

The responsibility for the administration of the policy is the Gene Technology Unit in the Department of Primary Industries, Water and the Environment (DPIWE).

Dr Rod Gobbey, the DPIWE's director of agriculture, says the responsibilities of the unit include providing information to farmers and other members of the public as well as interacting with the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator to facilitate evaluations of GMO field site trials.

"We have a moratorium in place on all commercial agricultural GMOs that extends to food and non-food crops," said Gobbey, explaining that exemptions for trials of certain crops can be granted provided certain conditions for containment and tracing exist.

Gene technology uses that are prevented under the policy include:

• All new commercial environmental releases of GM crops,
• Trials in the open environment of GM food crops,
• Trials in the open environment of GM non-food crops where no test is available to detect the presence of GM material, and
• The environmental release of GM animals and animal feed.

"I don't think the government has any intention of looking at this for some time," says Prof Don Chalmers, Dean of the Law School and Director of the Centre for Law and Genetics at the University of Tasmania.

"In some ways it's a pity, because just as there's been a niche in farming such as poppies, walnuts, there could have been a niche market created for GM plants. But I don't think the government will look at it. "It could lead to potentially lucrative industries being taken away from Tasmania."

Chalmers' colleague, Dr Dianne Nicol, points out that the Green movement has a strong foothold in Tasmania.

"Certainly when you look at plant biotech and GM, it becomes more emotive and so it is more difficult to bring the community point of view in line with the technology," she says.

One company that has an active interest in GMOs is Tasmanian Alkaloids, one of the world's leading suppliers of pharmaceutical ingredients from poppies. Dr Tony Fist, manager of agricultural R&D, says the company is collaborating with CSIRO on the development of transgenic poppies.

"We've done some greenhouse work on cross-pollination and have an application in to do a field trial," he says. "Before the moratorium we were able to get a licence to import material to use in our greenhouse trial."

Tasmanian Alkaloids is planning to perform field trials on transgenic poppies with up-regulated alkaloid production.

"Ours will be the first case through the Tasmanian system since the moratorium and we don't know how that will go," he says.

"The government has two requirements. One is that we have to have a test so we can test for particular genotypes and detect modified gene sequences in our field trial and be able to provide that to government. The other is that the release site must be isolated to prevent gene flow into other crops."

Fist claims Tasmanian Alkaloids has a fair amount of public support, as poppies are a major crop in Tasmania, but fears that the company could lose its competitive edge if it is prevented from developing new strains.

"If we can't stay at the cutting edge it could quite easily go down the gurgler," he cautions.

However he believes that on the whole, the government is supportive of the industry.

"We feel we have a sound relationship with the Tasmanian government and, although we had some tricky issues with the moratorium, we do feel that we have a voice there," he says.

Agricultural development company Serve-Ag was involved in field trials for GM canola before the moratorium was enacted.

"We wanted to screen new lines, test for traits in the field, look at our ability to grow, on a commercial scale, trials of the seed to test our capability and reliability," says CEO Buz Green.

"We identified quite a lot of opportunities for further growth and we were on a ramping-up process, but the moratorium has curtailed that activity in the short term and I feel it may curtail it for some time."

Meanwhile, Green says, the moratorium has had a significant financial impact on the company.

"The challenge for us under the current moratorium is to create value out of the position that has been created," he says.

"We really need to hone in on what we could be good at then get the scale of those things up. By doing that we could be world competitive and I believe that biotechnology does offer that.

"But it needs the support of all the people in Tasmania and if they don't support it we just won't do it."

Brian Chung, head of R&D at Botanical Resources Australia, a Tasmanian company that is one of the largest producers of pyrethrum in the world, says the company "would love to get into GMOs but we're not ready to yet."

Chung says limited money and the moratorium on GMOs were both factors, but he says that it is likely that the company will eventually go down the GM path. He believes that by the time Botanical Resources Australia is ready to pursue GMO technology, the moratorium will no longer be an issue.

Rod Gobbey, director of agriculture at the Tasmanian DPIWE, says that while the issue is relatively quiet at the moment, next year's scheduled review of the policy is bound to stir things up again.

"The world is grappling with the whole biotech issue in agriculture and it will take some time yet for the world to appreciate and be comfortable with this technology, which has so far been rather badly disparaged," says Serve-Ag's Green.