Apprehension in biotech community following Vic GM freeze

Australia's agribiotechnology industry has reluctantly accepted the Victorian government's decision to impose a 12-month voluntary moratorium on growing Australia's first commercial crops of genetically modified (GM) canola in Victoria.

The two companies seeking to market GM canola -- Bayer CropScience and Monsanto Australia -- and the agribiotech research community disagree with the decision, but have accepted it with quiet resignation.

However, there is considerable apprehension about the possibility of a long-term, legislated moratorium, similar to those proposed for NSW, WA and South Australia, when Victoria's voluntary moratorium expires next year.

Spokespeople for both companies have confirmed that they will continue to grow trial plots of their InVigor and Roundup Ready varieties in Victoria and other states -- Bayer CropScience already has approval from the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator to continue its trials, while Monsanto is confident of receiving approval in the near future.

Some commentators took comfort from the fact that the Bracks government's decision was based purely on marketing issues, rather than on anti-GM activists' claims that GM canola and other GM crops pose unacceptable risks to human health and to the environment.

Both the Australian Wheat Board and the Australian Barley Board have expressed concerns that contamination from GM canola crops -- either pollen or seeds -- could cause GM-sensitive customers to reject Australian wheat or barley.

Industry consensus lacking

Victoria's Agriculture Minister Bob Cameron hinted today that Victoria's decision might have different, had it not been for these concerns.

"The message is that we are pro-business -- we accept the Federal regulator's determinations, and we're going to tick the environmental and human health aspects of GM canola," Cameron said.

"But our policy commitment is that we have to examine marketing issues. We would have hoped for greater consensus in industry, and it wasn't forthcoming.

"When you have the likes of the wheat and barley boards expressing concern about the potential impact on their markets, it would be pretty cavalier of us to ignore them. We have to work through these issues.

"We want to look at the marketing and segregation issues, but there are already GM products on the shelves down at your local Woolworth's, and it would be two-faced of us to say that GM food is not good for human health."

Melbourne University agronomist Dr Rob Norton, author of a recent report that found GM canola could benefit the Australian grains industry by than $AUD100 million a year, said, there would need to be "a significant amount of concern" to deny growers access to GM canola.

"Hopefully, the delay will allow further information being acquired that is not available at the moment," he said.

"It's disappointing. Victoria had an opportunity to showcase the technology, and to validate and test the Gene Technology Grains Committee guidelines for growing the crop. That's no longer possible."

Asked whether the decision would encourage opponents of GM crops, Norton said it would, "because they have no intention of allowing GM technology to be approved on any level."

No safety issue

Dr Bryan Whan, director of the CRC for Plant Molecular Science in Adelaide, said the Victorian government's press release made it clear there was no safety issue with GM canola

"If it's their genuine desire to do further market assessments, and that involves only a 12-month delay, that's their prerogative," he said.

"But it's very clear that GM and non-GM canola are not differentiated in most world markets -- claims about premiums being paid for non-GM canola are nonsense."

Whan warned that if the short-term delay became a long-term, legislated moratorium, there would be major implications, not just for Victorian agriculture, but for Australian agriculture.

He said New Zealand's experience had already showed that a moratorium would stifle research: "New Zealand has lost millions of dollars in international research funds because of their moratorium.

"If the moratorium has no scientific basis, it will have a long-term impact on Australian agriculture. We will be left behind -- research is not stopping overseas, even in Europe, and the amount of money being invested in Asian countries like China, India and Singapore means we will end up way behind them."

The general manager of Bayer CropScience's bioscience division, Susie O'Neill, told Australian Biotechnology News that any long-term moratorium on GM canola would mean Australian growers would not gain the economic advantages of higher yields. Bayer says its new InVigor varieties possess hybrid vigour, and are predicted to deliver yield improvements of 10 to 15 per cent over current non-GM varieties.

Nor, O'Neill said, would farmers reap the benefits of lower inputs of herbicides and fossil fuel savings associated with better weed control.

She told Reuters that Queensland was the only Australian state currently supportive of agricultural biotechnology. "Canola is not a widely grown crop in Queensland, but it is possible we might plant some [commercial] InVigor hybrid canola in Queensland," she said.

Sensible reasons

Dr Chris Preston, director of the CRC for Weed Management in Adelaide, said Victoria's decision had been made "for sensible reasons", unlike the NSW government's recent decision to impose a four-year moratorium on the introduction of new GM crops.

But he said Canada, which like Australia, was a major producer of canola, wheat and barley, had had no trouble with exporting these grains.

"If we work out what needs to be done to ensure there are no marketing issues, and yet still get pressure to legislate for a moratorium, then I would be deeply concerned, because it would fly in the face of scientific information," Preston said.

"I believe it would set back Australia's ability to use GM technology in every broadacre crop, with the exception of cotton. Once a legislated moratorium is in place, it would be very difficult to repeal it, because of lobbying pressure to keep it in place.

"We could then find that, instead of being at the leading edge of agricultural biotechnology, we would forego it altogether."

Preston said one consequence of an effective national moratorium on GM canola was that it would effectively force farmers to continue to grow non-GM, herbicide-tolerant Clearfield and triazine-tolerant (TT) canola varieties that now dominated production in South Australia and Western Australia.

The imidazolonone herbicides used on Clearfield, and the atrazine and simazine herbicides used on TT varieties, persisted in the soil, and could leach into water tables and waterways.

There was also emerging evidence that the greater persistence of these herbicides in dry soils reduced the yields of cereal crops -- wheat and barley -- in the following season, so there was a productivity cost to non-adoption of GM canola, that needed to be weighed against any marketing costs.