GMW: NZ GOVERNMENT A LAUGHING STOCK - AN INTERNATIONAL EMBARRASSMENT

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GMW: NZ GOVERNMENT A LAUGHING STOCK - " AN INTERNATIONAL

EMBARRASSMENT "

" GM WATCH " <info

Tue, 31 May 2005 15:26:08 +0100

 

 

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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http://www.sustainabilitynz.org/news_item.asp?sID=148

Foreign Affair's Stance on GM Liability Provokes Laughter at Talks

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

 

Media Statement, PDF version

http://www.sustainabilitynz.org/docs/StanceonLiabilityProvokesLaughter310505pdf

 

New Zealand negotiators at a conference on liability for GMOs have

effectively proposed that the four year programme to develop an

international liability regime should aim at agreeing no liability

rules at all.

 

New Zealand's stance is so out of step that it provoked open laughter

from other countries when stated by Ministry of Foreign Affairs

officials currently in Montreal for meetings on the Cartagena Protocol.

 

When New Zealand suggested that an additional option was not to have a

liability " instrument " , delegates at the conference were in no doubt as

to what Foreign Affairs officials were advocating. " New Zealand is

arguing we should spend our time developing rules and procedures for

liability which would end up with no rules, " Malaysian delegate

Gurdial Singh

Nijar told the conference. One of the five options already on the table

was a non-binding agreement (or instrument) but New Zealand proposed

something weaker still and successfully added a sixth option of no

instrument.

 

Foreign Affairs officials are effectively arguing that if a GMO is

imported and causes harm, there should be no liability for the party that

sent it here. Yet New Zealand earns half its export income from selling

food and the major buyers in Japan and northern Europe routinely reject

food products with any detectable level of GM contamination.

 

Kiwi food producers will want a way to obtain compensation for economic

damage should GMOs arrive in New Zealand and then contaminate their

exports. Already there have been three incidents involving imports of GM

contaminated seed and each has cost a year's profit for a Gisborne

company and another took the affected company out of a key market for a

year.

 

New Zealand does not grow any GMOs, so one would expect its negotiators

to promote rules protecting its food producers and environment from GM

contamination costs that could be much larger than those to date. Yet

this is just the latest in a series of Foreign Affairs stances on GM

that are out of step. First was New Zealand's implicit support for the US

in its WTO action against the EU over access for its GMO exports. Then

New Zealand was among those supporting the lifting of a de facto

moratorium on trialing GM plants whose seeds are sterile.

 

The purpose of the Cartagena Protocol is to promote biosafety in the

transfer of living GMOs between countries (and not other biotech

products). Government ministers made the principled decision to ratify

the

agreement in September, against advice from most officials, in order to

enhance New Zealand's biosecurity. A key part of an effective biosecurity

regime is provisions to enforce liability on parties that cause harm.

New Zealand's food producers and its environment deserve that

protection.

 

Notes:

 

1.Summaries of the full discussions at the Montreal conference on

liability provisions for the Cartagena Protocol can be viewed at:

http://www.iisd.ca/biodiv/wglr/

 

The exchange referred to occurred on Thursday 26 May – see bottom of

the notes for that day.

 

2. The reference in the statement to " instrument " is to one of the

following 5 options that were already on the table for the form of

agreement that would ultimately specify liability provisions under

Cartagena.

They are:

 

1. Legally binding agreement

2. Legally binding agreement plus interim measures

3. Non-binding agreement

4. Two stage - non-binding, then binding agreement

5. Combination of non-binding and binding agreement

 

Foreign Affairs had a sixth one added to the list " no instrument " .

 

3. The negotiations are driven by Article 27 of the Cartagena Protocol

which implicitly covers all forms of damage, including economic harm,

and states:

 

" Liability and Redress: The Conference of the Parties serving as the

meeting of the Parties to this Protocol shall, at its first meeting,

adopt a process with respect to the appropriate elaboration of

international rules and procedures in the field of liability and

redress for damage

resulting from transboundary movements of living modified organisms,

analysing and taking due account of the ongoing processes in

international law on these matters, and shall endeavour to complete

this process

within four years. "

 

The full text of the agreement is available at http://www.biodiv.org

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Government sees NZ's future as a GE food exporter

31 May 2005

http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR8729.html

 

The Government doesn't see New Zealand as a '100% Pure' environment to

be protected from GE, but as a GE exporter that should have as little

liability as possible for contaminating other countries, says Jeanette

Fitzsimons.

 

The Green Co-Leader made the charge after challenging Environment

Minister Marian Hobbs in Parliament this afternoon over the Government's

position at the Montreal working group on legal and technical issues of

the Cartagena Protocol on bio-safety. The Malaysian delegation has

criticised New Zealand for questioning the need for any rules on

liability

under the Protocol, despite having agreed when it ratified the Treaty to

develop such rules.

 

" Marian Hobbs told the House that she was trying to protect New

Zealand's 'economic interests as an agricultural exporter'. The only

exporters

who

would be protected by an absence of liability are those exporting GE

foods. All other agricultural exporters, who would suffer loss from

contamination

from overseas, would be disadvantaged, " said Ms Fitzsimons, the Greens'

GE Spokesperson.

 

This shows that while there are currently no applications for release

of GE crops or animals and the issue has gone quiet, the Government's

longer-term vision is for New Zealand to become an exporter of GE foods.

 

" Ms Hobbs told the House today that her Government sees New Zealand's

own liability regime as the model for the proposed international

mechanism being negotiated under Cartagena.

 

" But in New Zealand there is no general liability for causing human

health or economic harm through the release or indiscriminate application

of

Genetically Modified Organisms, unless there is a specific law that has

been broken. If that model was applied internationally, New Zealand

would have no redress against contamination from countries that have no

laws in this area.

 

" Clearly, the Government is trying to protect future exporters of GE

products from liability for any contamination they cause overseas, rather

than protecting our environment and those exporters who depend upon its

GE-Free status for their market advantage.

 

" It is an international embarrassment that clean, green New Zealand

should be advocating such a lax approach to liability at a meeting to set

bio-safety rules, " said Ms Fitzsimons.

 

Jeanette Fitzsimons MP, 04 470 6661, 0274 586 068

Mark Servian, Media Officer, 04 470 6723, 021 505 434

 

 

 

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