"Clean and Green" No More?

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Realistically I can't see her listening at this point, however. She and her fussy ex-school ma'am Environment Minister Marian Hobbs dig themselves deeper and deeper into a rigid biotech defence position week by week as October 29 approaches, making it almost impossible for any compromise to be reached at this point without the loss of considerable political "face". More to the point, they have all been caught out lying over the "accidental" releases of GE contaminated corn at field sites up and down both North and South Islands and the suspicion amongst all of us with any insight into on-farm matters is that the GE corn release in 2000 (and possibly both earlier and later), far from being "accidental" was deliberately and carefully planned by the biotech corporates in North America who supplied the seed in the first place.

This, of course, is the inevitable conclusion you will come to if you read Kiwi GE activist Nicky Hager's revealing book, Seeds of Distrust, on the whole GE corn debacle that led up to the 2002 NZ parliamentary election. Over the past two months as the official investigation into some of the book's claims has limped to an end (earnestly, but incompetently covered up by Labour PR flakes) it is quite clear that the Labour Party deliberately lied and tried to hide evidence of a GE release and then played dirty politics with the naïve Greens, effectively smearing them as treacherous trouble-makers in the electorate's eyes.

This cost the Greens party votes under the new MMP voting system and their place in a coalition Government and heralded in a Labour/Christian Democrat alliance notable for its lickspittle compliance with Helen Clark's every whim. Notable also for some particularly silly pieces of legislation like the poorly executed farm "Fart Tax", which have clogged the Parliamentary process for the past year while more vital issues are ignored. These ignored issues include New Zealand's recent UN world ranking third place for child murders and child abuse and the huge increase in drug-related crimes, which an under-staffed police force seem unable to stop -- all, one should add, an inevitable part of the rot that entered NZ society in 1984.

Are New Zealand farmers aware of the implications in taking on GE crops that North American farmers have already proved cost more, yield less and lose them export markets?

Not really. Farmers I've spoken to all up and down New Zealand are almost totally ignorant of the true state of affairs out on the prairies of North America. Despite the vital importance of such information at this point in time, none of them were aware that even the US Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service has stated categorically that it can find no advantages to US farmers in growing GE crops and, furthermore, cannot explain farmers' earlier ready acceptance of biotech industry promises.

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