NZ FARMERS WEEKLY "GE free status big plus for NZ" 18 August 2009, p. l4

New Zealand's GM-free status is worth potentially huge money for us says John Bostock.

The Hawke's Bay-based entrepreneur and food exporter said he made a significant premium on export maize to Japan and Korea compared with maize from the US which is now impossible to guarantee as GM-free.

He exported both conventional and organic food grade maize to these markets, where it is used for human consumption, making starch or animal feed.

The perception in the market place is that US maize is not as valuable and customers don't want it, he said.

"Some markets are extremely sensitive about the integrity of foreign food You only have to reflect on the hysteria created about American beef in Korea due to the BSE issue in the USA."

He said the GM work done by AgResearch and other Crown Research Institutes was grossly misguided. "I don't believe they are going to add any value for NZ. And they are definitely wasting our money."

For example there was work under way on GE onions, he said. "The question is, who is going to buy it. The Europeans don't want GE onions and that is our major market. The Japanese don't want it. Why do it?" he asked.

He wanted to see that research money spent on sustainability issues and organic agriculture.

And Bostock said there was no advantage to farmers to go down the GM road If there was any advantage, the owners of the technology would try to take it, with very little left for the farmers, he said.

"If you look around the world there are no GE products where farmers are at an advantage.

"In the case of Round-up ready crops, you simply get resistant weeds, and other weeds which take over. You replace one problem with another because nature abhors a vacuum."

He didn't want to see any GM work done on foods because it would limit markets, he said. "And worse than that, we are affecting the wider NZ perception."

Bostock had talked to both National and Labour politicians about the issue and said they hadn't been very receptive.

He said they were being sold a line by scientists who liked doing the complicated research. "It sounds all very good but I don't think the results have been thought through.

"I don't think the commercialization phase has been thought through. Because of our regulatory regimes the cost of releasing into the environment will be a very high barrier," he said.

"I think with ERMA losing the High Court case, there will have to be a serious re-think about strategies," he said.


letters to editor:

By Staff Reporter Marie Taylor
New Zealand Farmers' Weekly - 18 Aug 2009