NSW govt tipped to soften GM crop ban

Is the NSW Carr government -- the first state government to legislate for a moratorium on genetically modified crops -- having second thoughts?

The NSW government has circulated a discussion paper on its Gene Technology (GM Crop Moratorium) Amendment Bill to state MPs, which outlines a proposal to relieve the state's agriculture minister of the obligation to refer applications to grow new commercial GM crops to the independent Advisory Council on Gene Technology (ACGT).

Earlier this year, state agriculture minister Ian McDonald referred an application by Monsanto Australia and Bayer CropScience to conduct a GM canola coexistence trial in NSW to the ACGT. But even before receiving the ACGT recommendations, the minister announced he had rejected Monsanto-Bayer field trial applications, after a concerted campaign by anti-GM activists to paint the ACGT as being pro-GM.

Monsanto has already shut down its GM canola field trials in Australia, and the NSW government's new proposal may also have been influenced by the prospect that Bayer CropScience could do the same if the anti-GM movement is seen to be dictating the NSW government's policy on GM crops.

NSW Greens MLC Ian Cohen said in a statement that the Carr government had "reduced the council to a rubber stamp".

"It can recommend whatever it likes, but the minister only has to give it a copy of an application before he can proceed to approve a GM food crop," Cohen said.

He said the government had systematically removed the checks and balances on its own activities and decisions. If passed, the legislation would deny the independent council an effective role in recommending conditions on any approval to grow GM crops, based on scientific advice, he said.

During the ACGT's in-camera hearings on the Monsanto-Bayer field trial applications, its two anti-GM activist members Juliet McFarlane (Network of Concerned Farmers) and Jo Immig (NSW Nature Conservation Council) went public with accusations that their fellow council members of being pro-GM, and of ignoring farmers' concerns about the trials. The council's chair, Prof Tim Reeves, criticised McFarlane and Immig for breaching the council's voluntary code of confidentiality.

Cohen said Carr had promised a three-year ban on GM crops last year to protect farmers and consumers until more was known about GM crops. He said the premier had "sold out the public and opened the door for the big biotech companies to return and grow GM crops next year."

Another Greens spokesman, Paul Sheridan, said yesterday not enough was known about GM crops, and the results of previous Monsanto and Bayer field trials of GM canola had never been made public. He said GM crops required "an enormous amount of caution".

"There are very few safeguards in place, especially for farmers who face the prospect of crop contamination.'

Sheridan said GMHT canola also posed a threat to the environment.

Asked whether the state bans on GM herbicide-tolerant canola might pose a greater risk, by forcing canola farmers to grow triazine-tolerant, non-GM varieties, Sheridan said Australian farmers should grow canola without herbicides.

Triazine herbicides have been banned in Europe, on human-health and environmental grounds.