by Steffan Browning
It’s been a busy few months fighting genetic engineering in New Zealand.
Firstly I have been negotiating with the Minister for Food Safety to try and get GE put back into the Food Bill.
I then spent a couple of weeks travelling around New Zealand with two Australian farmers talking to communities about the Australian experience of GE crops in their farming communities.
To follow up with a solution that will maintain our primary producers marketing advantage, I put a Members Bill into the ballot which would put a moratorium back into place to halt the release of GE organisms into the New Zealand environment for the next 10 years.
In September we had the Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference in Rotorua. I convened a public meeting and spoke at a rally before the conference and then attended the conference. Disturbingly the biotech conference was dominated by GE proponents, including senior people from GE giants Monsanto and DuPont, and the USA State Department’s senior biotechnology advisor, all pushing for New Zealand to accept GE crops.
I had questioned the Minister of Science and Innovation in the house about the Government’s financial support of this conference.
I have just put forward an amendment to the Patents Bill currently going through the House that will stop the patenting of life that is crucial to the GE industries’ ability to make money.
We’ve been fuelled in this work by the people all around New Zealand who are continuing to fight against GE. It’s been great to see the network working strong on these issues and we look forward to the next strides.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Steffan Browning on Tue, September 18th, 2012
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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Where are all the comments??,
Thankyou,Steffan Browning, for all you do; this is another of our many vital issues;
can we possibly have more e-mail petitions in New Zealand so that we can all quickly and easily contribute what little we can to the goals and work of the Green Party etc., for this country of ours? Overseas, tens of thousands sign the many petitions, with amazing victories….We certainly have tens of thousands of caring people here in N.Z! Thankyou.
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I thought the GE giants press releases were great. Made them look like the luddities they are. Keep up the good wrok Steffan
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No need really to comment, we are remarkably of one mind about this. There is no excuse for GE “in the wild” in NZ, no reason to pursue it and it is a one-way street. Again an attempt to “sell the family silver”, in this case our “clean-green” image and our GE free status, for short term gain.
If someone like Mr Bailey here, had some serious argument to make I think we would pile on just fine, but he didn’t actually say anything.
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