The clean, green reputation of New Zealand — an image worth millions, according to the environment industry — is under threat along with its government in a row over genetically modified (GM) crops that is overwhelming this week’s general election.
Nearly four million voters in one of the last countries in the world where the entire food production is GM-free go to the polls on Saturday and the outcome of the furious debate is as likely to decide the balance of power as security, health or the economy.
The question dominating the world’s first GM election — whether to lift a moratorium on the use of GM technology next year — has split the Labour-led ruling coalition of Prime Minister Helen Clark after two and a half years of environmentally friendly government. Labour supports lifting the moratorium while the Green Party is fiercely against it.
New Zealand’s green image has been fiercely protected by its government, which has adopted measures to safeguard its crops and livestock that include Day-Glo ”Biosecurity Alert” posters urging citizens to report pests, disease or illegally imported fruit, plants and pets. The discovery of one exotic moth recently led to the fumigation of a whole suburb of Wellington.
New Zealand has learned the hard way that meddling with its natural flora and fauna can wreak havoc for hundreds of years. As proof many cite the possum, a cute little Australian mammal introduced to create a fur industry. What made good economic sense 200 years ago has today proved a multimillion-dollar disaster.
With no predators in New Zealand, the possum population has exploded and they are now one of the country’s biggest pests, gobbling up 60 000 tonnes of vegetation a day.
Fearing that engineered crops and livestock could have similarly disastrous long-term consequences, New Zealand has put in place a GM ban that is far more draconian than controls in Europe.
”New Zealand is one of the few countries left in the world where the entire production of food is GM-free,” said Jim Kebbell, who runs the country’s biggest organic retail outlet. ”This is a golden opportunity because consumers don’t want GM and, if we keep the moratorium, we’ll be the only ones who will be able to satisfy them.”
The debate reflects an interest in environmental issues stretching back to the outrage at the attempted sinking of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour in 1985 and the government’s refusal to allow United States warships carrying nuclear weapons into its ports.
But it also raises questions about the country’s economic future and national identity. New Zealand has more at stake in the GM debate than any other advanced country because it relies on agriculture for half of its economic activity and exports — a figure five times higher than the developed nation average.
Until now, New Zealand has kept its GM technology firmly locked up in the labs. Those in the farming and biotechnology community who want to unlock the doors have ideas for its use. Among them are a GM birth-control carrot for possums and GM cow’s milk for the treatment of multiple sclerosis.
Such differences were supposed to have been settled by a royal commission, which reported last October after a year-long study. But its recommendation that New Zealand should move cautiously towards GM technology sparked the biggest street demonstration seen in the country since the anti-nuclear campaign in the 1980s.
More aggressive protests have been carried out by hardline groups such as Rage (Revolt against Genetic Engineering) and the Wild Greens, including the destruction of a bio-research site in Christchurch in February. The Green Party has also adopted an uncompromising stance. Having supported the Labour administration for two and a half years, they astonished Clark two months ago by announcing that they would walk out of the coalition if she went ahead with plans to lift the moratorium in October next year.
Clark said their ”fundamentalism” over GM risked gains made on other environmental issues such as opposition to whaling and support for the Kyoto pact on greenhouse gases.
But she has struggled to get her message across, especially since the mid-campaign explosion of ”Corngate” — a scandal that saw the government accused of covering up reports that the US-based company Novartis may have unwittingly imported tens of thousands of GM corn seeds.
The scandal suggested Clark had buckled to the demands of the agri-business lobby. Though she dismisses Corngate as a media concoction, the damage has been done. In a poll last week voters said the GM debate was a more important election issue than the economy. With Labour’s ratings slipping from 56% to 46%, Clark is drifting further from an outright majority.
The Greens, meanwhile, are on course to double their share of the vote to 12%.
Under New Zealand’s system of proportional representation, this would probably make them the third-biggest party in the 120-seat Parliament. — (c) Guardian Newspapers