Greenpeace to begin Australian anti-GE campaign

Greenpeace has hired its first local team to campaign against genetic engineering in Australia.

UK-based Greenpeace GE campaigner Jim Thomas said Australia was a key player in the GE debate, as genetically engineered crops were being grown here.

Thomas has been sent to Australia to train the new recruits on the organisation's international 'True Food' campaign against genetic engineering.

"Greenpeace has been working on GE issues since the beginning of the 1990s," Thomas said. "In Australia, there is already a strong campaign against genetically engineered foods by other groups, and we are just joining in.

"It is going to be another voice talking about the real threats and the real problems of genetic engineering in agriculture and really calling for the market in Australia to follow the example what has happened in the rest of the world," he said.

Thomas said global food producers and a large number of farmers overseas claimed genetic engineering did not do them any good, and that Greenpeace had scientists on board who could support such claims.

He would not say whether the Australian team would include any scientists.

"Greenpeace will be letting Australian food companies know that we don't want GMOs," he said, but he did not want to reveal much more about the campaign while it was still in its research phase, he said.

"The food industry has listened to the public mood about GMOs but unfortunately it is still getting into the food chain," he said. He claimed that 65 per cent of Australians were against GMOs.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Commonwealth agency Biotechnology Australia claimed today that the Australian public was confused about the both organic and GE food, and that regular public slanging matches between proponents of both went little way to clarifying the differences in the mind of the public.

Craig Cormick, Biotechnology Australia's manager of public awareness, said such brawls not help consumers make more informed choices about what foods they might choose to eat.

"Australian consumers would be better served by a more balanced public debate that concentrated on the scientific risks and benefits of each food, rather than a confrontational debate - which exaggerates the risks of either food type," he said.

Australian New Zealand Food Authority spokesman Dr Dack Michael said the authority would following Greenpeace's activities with interest.

A spokesperson for the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator said the office's intention was to meet with Greenpeace as soon as possible and brief it about the regulator's role.

"We are neither for nor against genetic engineering, and we are there to regulate it, so any new player that is taking an interest in it is welcome," she told Australian Biotechnology News.