They took me on a trip around the coastline, with the safety officer and team leaders to check for oil and debris. There were lots of stranded containers and timber piled up on unreachable rocks. But, for the time being at least, on the surface it was pretty clean.

Under the surface is a very different story.

Under the surface kina are blackened and dead. Crayfish are found smothered in oil and dead. Under the surface, the fish and shellfish are polluted and cannot be eaten.

Under the surface of this disaster are the families who eat everyday from the ocean but cannot anymore.

John Key talks of compensation for business, tourism and the fishing industry, and rightly so. Peoples’ livelihoods are in peril and financial support is needed. That is the right thing to do.

But what about those hundreds of families on low incomes who supplement their meagre incomes with the bounty of the sea? There are hundreds of families on minimum wages or benefits or superannuation who cannot afford seafood, so they get it straight out of the ocean—as is their birthright.

That is how the ocean is used by coastal communities every day in this country: as a daily source of fresh healthy food.

So, who will compensate their food budgets?

Does John Key understand that his failure to take the warnings seriously means that families have lost a food source on which they and their kids depend?

No, he clearly does not. His glib comment that this will be all ‘over by Christmas’ underlines his shallowness.

The shellfish could take many months to recover back to a healthy, safe state. They are filter feeders and there will have to be rigorous on-going testing of shellfish beds all along the coast and on every island and reef. The cost to the fish stocks is unknown, as is the impact on the phytoplankton at the beginning of the food chain. It could be months before the shellfish can be declared safe to eat. That means months without this food for those who rely on it.

On Motiti, throughout the day, the clean-up crews were well feed and cared for. That is the way of manakitanga and for coastal peoples, kuia and kaumatua, seafood is a source of pride and richness.

John Key has an irresponsibly shallow understanding of the consequences of his failure.

These concerns, unfortunately, were never raised during the submission stage of the bill, when they can be examined in depth. Nor were any submissions sent in from any food groups raising these concerns.

The best way to raise concerns such as these about legislation before Parliament is through the submission process, not afterwards when the bill has been through select committee.

Since the hearings on the bill had been completed before anyone raised these concerns, the only way to inquire about them was to write directly to the Minister for Food Safety.

After taking some time to examine the issues, the Minister has confirmed that it was never the intention of the bill to cover seed saving, the barter or selling of food seeds or seedlings, or the provision of food and accommodation in exchange for labour.

She has confirmed that she will be amending the bill to make it explicit that it wont include seed or food exchanges, or related issues.

Here is the letter that Kate Wilkinson sent to me [PDF].

It was tense and difficult but when I was 18 I came out to my parents. I was now a vegetarian. For my small town, conservative, lifestyle-block farming family it was a surprisingly strange thing for their provincial boy to do, soon after moving to The Big City for study.

I’m not alone. There are approximately 86,000 of us herbivores (as my dinosaur-mad son calls us), mung bean munchers and tofu tasters in New Zealand. There are four vegetarians in Parliament with a big representation from my party (three of the four are from the Greens). I’ve been a vegetarian for ten years now, and I’ve come to the realisation that what you put in your mouth is political. Food is politics.

Growing up in Gisborne I had a pretty limited appreciation of food. At school I ate pie-sandwiches, lasagne-topper sandwiches and steak sandwiches. I loved my meat and I didn’t spare a thought for where it came from, how it was raised or its quality. At university I started questioning the environmental, ethical and health implications of my diet and came to the conclusion I didn’t want to support the way we currently farm or fish.

Turning vegetarian I felt great and learnt all about interesting new foods – like lentils, cheeses and falafel. However, every Christmas my lunch consisted of salad and potatoes while the others feasted on turkey, ham and chicken. My family still ‘accidentally’ served me meat and urged me to ‘push it to the side’ and threatened to sneak meat into my wedding, since we wouldn’t take up their offer of a pig on a spit. I don’t think meat eaters are bad, and I could re-join their carnivorous ranks one day, but I’ve decided that if I ever eat it again I’ll raise or catch it myself (but the only time I have tried, fishing on Waiheke Island, all I caught was sunstroke).

I think one of the reasons the Vege Munch Bunch are a minority is that most people think a plant-based diet is unhealthy and lacking in essentials. Of course it can be if you do it like I did early on, surviving just on hot chips one summer. People often query where do you get all the protein, omega 3s and awesome-manly-power from if you don’t eat meat? You don’t need pills or iron supplements to be a healthy vegetarian: all that is required is a balanced and broad diet. In fact the reverse is true: many meat eaters are unhealthy and suffer from heart disease, obesity, strokes and hypertension – conditions which in some cases can be directly related to their high-meat diet. On average you can chew through a few animals in your lifetime. The normal meat-eater is personally responsible for the slaughter of 5 cows, 20 pigs, 30 sheep, 760 chickens, 46 turkeys, 15 ducks, 7 rabbits, 1 1/2 geese and 1/2 tonne of fish.

It wasn’t primarily ethical or health reasons that made me forsake the fish in fish and chips or the ham in a hamburger. Why I turned vege and still am one is for environmental reasons. As the Vegetarian Society points out, there are some 800 million people in the world with barely enough to eat, yet 80% of the world’s agricultural land is used for feeding animals and only 20% for feeding humans directly. When I was young I was told not to waste food because they were starving in Ethiopia. I wasn’t aware though, that during their huge famine while millions starved the nation still exported crops for feeding European livestock. Meat is inefficient and uses more energy, oil, water than grains or beans. If we want to feed the world we can’t do it on the average Kiwis’ meaty diet.

It’s not what we’re farming – it’s how we’re farming. The way that most of our egg and pork products are produced is a travesty. It would be considered torture if we subjected humans or companion animals like cats and dogs to cruel sow crates or battery cages. Farming is also a major contributor to climate change, responsible for half of our emissions in New Zealand and nearly a fifth globally. To put that in perspective, that’s more than all the cars, boats and planes globally according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.

There used to be plenty of fish in the sea but world-wide fisheries are collapsing at an alarming rate. Where did all the fish go? We ate them. New Zealand’s quota system only provides information on about 20% of the 628 fishery stocks, and worryingly one third of these are over-fished, depleted or collapsed. As the ocean’s top predator, humans are wiping out fisheries, fishing down the oceanic food chain, now catching previously throw-away species like Hoki. At the rate we’re going we’ll all be eating jellyfish and chips. And how we are fishing is affecting the ocean’s food chain in other ways too: marine biologist Steve O’Shea has pointed out that an increasing number of starved whales are beaching themselves on the New Zealand coastline.

The way your food is caught, raised and killed is largely up to you. What you eat is political. Even if you don’t want to go vege you can still make a difference to the world by cutting back on your meat consumption and buying organic, local and free range whenever possible. The best advice I’ve heard about eating is: ‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants’, from Michael Pollan’s excellent book In Defence of Food. I would recommend this to anyone interested in thinking more about their diet, how it affects our health, and our planet.

If you’re interested in some animal-free goodness, email me  for my kick-ass vegan chocolate self-saucing pudding I developed when I was sailing on the Rainbow Warrior. Always pleases!

These five corporations have been given the green light to bring into New Zealand an astonishing 38 genetically engineered ingredients–genetically engineered canola, corn, soybeans, cotton, potato, rice, sugarbeet and lucerne. See the complete list here.

8 more applications for more genetically engineered foods –namely corn, cotton and soybean–are in the pipeline, and will no doubt be rubber stamped by Food Standards Australia New Zealand –the food regulatory body where New Zealand has only one vote out of ten.

Note that these five corporations are amongst the most powerful in the world, and dominate the global food market.

Monsanto owns the patent on 21 of the 38 genetically engineered foods that are used in New Zealand;

All of these 38 genetically engineered foods end up as ingredients in our food, and almost none of them have to be declared on a label- thanks to our Claytons labelling laws.

So the only way to avoid consuming genetically engineered ingredients is to only eat fresh, not processed food, or to only buy food from companies that have committed to avoiding using genetically engineered ingredients.

And this is cubicle factory dairy production – the battery cow. Or this:

Cognitive dissonance anyone?

Most of us love having homes where we go to rest, eat, blog and shelter from rough weather. But imagine spending 8 months of the year confined inside – you’d have one hell of a case of cabin fever. That’s what is being applied for in the case of the Mackenzie Basin factory-farms.

Federated Farmers and the National Business Review are pretending not to know the difference between a herd home and a factory farm. They even think Russel Norman and I have different opinions on them.

A herd home on a Waikato dairy farm

They can’t succeed in driving a wedge between Russel and me on this because Russel and I visited Mike Moss’s herd home together, last year. This farm is featured on the Greens’ Good Farm Stories website.

Herd homes are open, light and airy and the cows are free to move around. They are not used 24/7. Even in filthy weather the cows are outside for at least the four hours it takes them to eat their daily ration of fresh grass. Then they are off the paddock, protecting the soil from pugging in wet weather and sheltering in the herd home where they have a ration of hay or silage to eat at will.

Russel and I were totally convinced when we saw the cows waiting to get back in after their time outside. When the weather is fine and the soil reasonably dry, they are outside all the time. Using a herd home as part of a pastoral farm results in much less nitrous oxide emissions from the wet soil. More manure and urine are able to be collected and treated for application to pasture when conditions are suitable. Animal welfare is improved. And herd homes can be used in a low-energy system because the cows still harvest their own feed with local dry feed as a supplement.

Mackenzie Country in snow CC 2.0

The factory-farms being applied for in the Mackenzie Basin are the opposite. The cows will be indoors 24 hours a day for 8 months, perhaps in cubicles most of the time. All feed will be brought to them, so it will require additional energy to produce and transport. Will it be palm kernel? Or maize or silage ‘cut and carried’ by trucks from hundreds of miles away? The Mackenzie Basin is a place where for much of the year no feed can be grown locally and the weather is inhospitable for cows.

Federated Farmers have twittered that it is the “principal” (I think they mean principle) that matters, not the scale. They’re wrong: it’s both.

Environmentally, scale can be everything. 180 cows might have a manageable impact on water quality, but 18,000 cows is a whole different ball-game. It is precisely the scale of dairying in New Zealand – the sheer numbers of cows, the intensity of stocking rates, and the resulting effluent and emissions – that is turning what used to be seen as a ‘clean green’ wholesome industry into a major polluter.

It’s also the principle. Outdoor cows that occasionally go indoors is fundamentally different to indoor cows that occasionally go outdoors. Animal welfare is an issue of principle, not scale – farm animals should live meaningful lives on farms, not in factories.

Intensive dairying in completely unsuitable places like the Mackenzie Country, and factory-farming practices generally, are recipes for disaster. The principle is all wrong, and the scale makes it worse still.

If you need any more convincing, then consider that Fonterra promotes use of herd homes on dairy farms, but has serious concerns about factory-farming destroying New Zealand’s competitive advantage of World SPCA-approved ‘clean and green’ pastoral dairying. And today the ODT reports Otago tourism and residents’ organisations calling the factory-farming proposals “insanity”.

Agricultural intensification over the past 10 years has led to the highest rate of native vegetation loss since European colonisation.

Lake Taupo farm and forest

So says the 2009 annual report of Landcare Research, a Crown Research Institute, in an article about ‘Post-capitalism conservation’.

Landcare argues that the market is disconnected from natural capital, a problem that has contributed to the current economic crisis. Land biodiversity in New Zealand is a good example: where natural vegetation has been cleared away for intensive farming. This results in:

increased risk to the ongoing supply of essential goods and services (such as clean water) provided by biodiversity, as well as its intrinsic aesthetic and intellectual value.

They say that the fragmentation of native forests and streamside vegetation also make us more vulnerable to invasive species and impacts of climate change, and reduce resilience on the remainder of native biodiversity such that it further fragments.

I was staggered at the fact that the last decade has seen the fastest decline in native vegetation since colonisation. I knew we were still losing more native cover than we were gaining, but the ‘worst decade’ status is quite extraordinary. It’s certainly more evidence that the Labour government’s environmental rhetoric was just that, rhetoric.

The key instrument to arrest this decline would be a National Policy Statement on Biodiversity to give some guidance for the Resource Management Act. There’s no doubt it’s a difficult policy to write, because to work it would have to restrict landowners’ clearance of native vegetation, and incentivise regeneration and replanting. Given this decade’s performance has been so bad, current voluntary schemes like covenants, guidelines and accords are not sufficient. It is New Zealand Inc. that will pay the cost, including private landowners, with degraded waterways and more pest and weed problems. The Greens finally convinced Labour to commit to the NPS on biodiversity as part of ETS negotiations (pine forests in the wrong place can be another threat to biodiversity), after Labour’s earlier false start in 2000. National committed to one before the election:  “National is committed to developing a NPS under the RMA on biodiversity. It is likely the 2011 deadline will be met”. This then slipped to unlikely, but now seem interested again. Whether the two old parties have more than a Clayton’s interest will be seen in time.

Meanwhile, Landcare’s work is aimed at assessing and valuing the public values of biodiversity, including the idea of biodiversity offsetting. The Greens can see some benefit in biodiversity offsetting, but plenty of dangers too.

Mokihinui Gorge from the air

Take Meridian’s proposed land-swap to allow them to dam the Mokihinui River. Their proposal is to swap the 330ha of forest and river they want to inundated in the Mokihinui Gorge with 794ha of coastal forest land they have bought. This would then mean the gorge was effectively private land, and no longer conservation land, so no concession would be required from DOC to dam it. That’s a net gain of 450ha of native forest, right?

Wrong. The first problem is that currently there are 1030ha of native forest at the two sites. Doing the swap and damming the gorge will result in 800ha left – a net loss of 330ha. While the protection status of the coast forest would be higher, it is forest now and will still be forest after so little is gained. Fundamentally, neither area of forest should be cut down .

The second problem is that the nature of the two sites is very different. Damming the Mokihinui would result in one fewer wild river, obstruct a very health habitat of the already-declining long-finned eel and whio (blue duck), and destroy a unique landscape with its own intrinsic values.

DOC and the Minister of Conservation are currently considering Meridian’s proposed land-swap, so please write to Tim Groser to urge him to turn it down.

Frog will look deeper at biodiversity offsetting in future, but finally, Landcare’s article also notes the importance to pest control to ensure we don’t just have forests, but have healthy forests. The Green MPs write about the same in the latest issue of GreenTimes, which you can read here [PDF 800kb].

The Mohaka River has a Water Conservation Order on it. However its quality is declining. One tributary comes from the volcanic plateau where land has been converted from forests to industrial-sized dairy farms. [See my earlier post of Fish and Game's underwater video showing the mixing of the polluted Taharua into the pristine Mohaka waters.]

One of the Taharua farms is a Crafar farm and has been convicted of illegal effluent discharge in the past and given a record $37,500 fine at that time [now surpassed by the $90,000 fine for a Waikato Crafar farm].

However, the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council is grappling with the problem that even full compliance with effluent discharge rules will not arrest the decline of the water quality. The Chair has written that:

…science now strongly suggests that three large intensive dairy farms, on a small catchment with light volcanic soils, are overloading the Taharua stream with nutrients, which is then detrimentally affecting the Mohaka River, particularly in its upper reaches.

Baybuzz recently wrote about a Council meeting where this was discussed.

In a meeting yesterday full of promising aspirations to clean up the Tukituki and allocate its water, to rescue the Taharua River from nutrient overload, and to “engage” dairy farmers in the Bay, our Regional Councillors just couldn’t bring themselves to utter the word “regulate” … as in require land use practices that would mitigate unacceptable water pollution. Even when posed as a “last resort” option to deal with the hard cases.

Haven’t we learned?
If we don’t regulate builders, we get water-logged homes.
If we don’t regulate financial institutions, we get fleeced.
If we don’t regulate medical practitioners, we get maimed or worse.
In each of these cases, we legislate formal standards and then enforce them.

The HBRC Chair Alan Dick replied that the Council is willing to regulate, but only the “effects of land use activities and the consequent non point source discharges that are generated”. However, when regulating effect is not enough, regulating cause is needed. Sadly, an attempt to get the Council to agree to simply investigate regulating land-use was rejected.

These soils are simply not suitable for dairy environmentally, or economically given that 2 of the 3 farms are apparently now in receivership. It seems a good opportunity for the Council or Government to buy them and plant some sustainable forestry.

The decision of the Council is to be considered by the whole Council this Wednesday. The Mohaka is a national treasure – Water Conservation Order are for “nationally outstanding” waterbodies – so it is quite appropriate for all Kiwis who love the river to have a say, not just those who live in Hawkes Bay. The Council needs to strongly regulate cause and effect to clean up the Mohaka. You can email the Chair of the HBRC - Alan Dick .

Baybuzz also reported that at the recent HBRC meeting, someone called Simon Lusk commented:

Councillors should be aware that the interests of a limited few to make a profit out of a public good is not a platform that has lead to enduring electability. Voters in NZ and overseas have taken direct action at the ballot box to protect water.

Hear hear!

The World Bank has withdrawn funding for the palm oil sector including the Wilmar company that supplies [PDF] palm kernel to Fonterra. The World Bank is not satisfied that the palm plantations they loaned to in parts of the developing world met acceptable standards for sustainability. Congratulations to the Forest Peoples Programme and other groups such as Greenpeace for the excellent activism and lobbying on this issue.

As a forests campaigner I am delighted at any moves for reassessment by the funders of planet-wrecking. The wholesale destruction of tropical rainforests in places like Sumatra, Kalimantan and West Papua has accelerated since the rush to produce palm oil. Fonterra and New Zealand dairy farms are some of the largest customers for palm kernel on the planet, which is a co-product of the palm oil plantations. They need to stop and think about their responsibilities.

The illegal and unsustainable logging which precedes the plantations must stop.  The palm oil boom has made it even tougher to prevent the extinction of rare plants and animals which depend on tropical rainforest. Then there is the small matter of the 60 million indigenous people world wide who depend on the integrity of forest ecosystems. Rainforest destruction is our loss in terms of climate change and biodiversity, but forest people are also hit by the immediate front-line loss of homes, food supplies, culture and future.

It is about time that the World Bank slowed down the funding of deforestation and demanded robust certification of all products connected to its funding programmes. Their action signals to industrial dairy, corporates that market palm products and concerned citizens that all products from the tropical rainforest areas of the world need careful scrutiny. It is not easy to verify that timber or palm products come from socially and ecologically sustainable sources, but consumers can start by asking questions.

This destructive industry is attempting to claim green credibility, but with little success. The English Advertising Standards Authority has just upheld  a complaint by Friends of the Earth of misleading advertising by Malaysian Palm Oil companies. An advertisement claiming palm oil to be The Green Answer was found to be untrue.

The World Bank has signalled change with their cheque-books and we can also do our bit. In this country, and globally, Fonterra needs to examine the use of palm kernel as an animal feed, just like Cadbury did with palm oil recently after intense public pressure.

I’m confident that New Zealanders are also keen to reject illegal logging. Fortunately, Parliament has an opportunity to stand up against rainforest destruction by voting for my Member’s Bill, the Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Bill, which will regulate the trade at the border. The Bill will be in the House at the end of this month so I’m asking you to remind the Government of Aotearoa New Zealand how to vote for the forests.

Fed Farmers Dairy chairman Lachlan McKenzie addressed the organisation’s AGM  yesterday and made some quite ridiculous and irresponsible comments on the progress that farmers have made in cleaning up waterways.

This time last year, Fish and Game New Zealand was calling on the government to regulate production in the agricultural sector. My how the tables have turned. NIWA and DairyNZ’s last report showed that water quality is no longer declining in the intensive dairy catchments despite a major increase in animals. Now that the scientific evidence is on our side maybe Fish and Game can actually focus on its real job… All I can say is that it is a shame our most vocal critics suffer from selective hearing when it comes to the great strides dairy farmers have made in recent years.

Hmmm… selective hearing – that’s not good? Well, let’s have a look at the NIWA report that Mr McKenzie cites….

The results of the NIWA survey on river quality released last week show very clearly that as agricultural use of land increases, water quality is deteriorating. Of the 77 monitored sites tested, nitrogen levels rose at 52 sites and fell at none. Phosphorous levels increased at 22 sites and fell at only nine. Lead authors Deborah Ballantine and Robert Davies-Colley say that while there have been ‘spot’ improvements, overall the quality of water in New Zealand rivers continues to get worse. They say the links between deteriorating water quality and agriculture are clear.

Mr McKenzie is the one selectively reading the science. Just yesterday Environment Minister Dr Nick Smith released two new reports on freshwater quality, one of them a baseline study on at water quality in dairy farming catchments. The Minister himself shot-down Mr McKenzie argument:

There is a significant water quality issue emerging in areas of intensive farming, particularly dairying… It is no surprise that the report identifies degraded water quality in these areas and reinforces the need for further Government initiatives.

I don’t for a moment diss the great work that some farmers are doing to take responsibility for the impact of their stock on waterways. Jeanette has been visiting as many sustainable farming operations as she can in recent months to learn what responsible and innovative farmers are doing, and earlier this week, Kevin Hague blogged on a great community initiative in Golden Bay that has seen the Aorere River – a heavily farmed catchment – dramatically cleaned up to the point that aquaculture farms at the mouth of the river are healthy again.

Despite these initiatives, water quality in farmed catchments across the country is still declining. Until that trend genuinely reverses, there is no point using selective science to pretend otherwise. In fact it is grossly irresponsible to say that “the tables have turned”, and that “the scientific evidence is on our side’ when the trend is the opposite and in dire need of reversing. The Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture made this quite clear at the recent launch of the Dairy Strategy.

Mr McKenzie is doing NZ farmers a disservice with his misleading statements.

The first comes from NIWA, and updates water quality trends at the 77 National River Water Quality Network sites, which have been monitored over the last 20 years. The study confirmed that waterways flowing through farmland have higher levels of nitrogen and phosphorous than those that flow through unfarmed land. Wow, who’d have thunk it?

Of the 77 sites tested, nitrogen levels rose at 52 sites and fell at none. Phosphorous levels increased at 22 sites and fell at only nine. NIWA’s principal scientist Rob Davies-Colley puts it plainly: “It’s farm use of land that is driving our water quality in the wrong direction.”

The second report, authored by Dr Mike Joy from Massey University’s Institute of Natural Resources, shows that intensive farming is killing my dear friends, our freshwater fish species. The study reviewed 22,500 records of fish communities nationally and found they show significant decline over the past 40 years. Dr Joy says, “Our freshwater ecosystems are in dire straits and more than half of our native freshwater fish species are classed as being at risk of extinction.”

What a timely reminder of the urgent need for the government to set enforceable water quality standards, and embark on a large scale programme of fencing and riparian planting of waterways, a ‘Green New Deal’ project we estimate could create over 2000 new jobs.

Let’s hope the Government’s endorsement of a collaborative governance process for freshwater, the Land and Water Forum, will come up with strong recommendations for action on both these points. Our children have the right to swim in our rivers and lakes, and we owe it to the species and ecosystems that rely on clean water to survive and thrive.

NZ is ably represented by former Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer and, according to news reports, he is “respectfully urging” Japan to lift its threat to hunt humpback whales in the Antarctic. The ODT reports he told the IWC:

new evidence about the endangered status of humpbacks in the South Pacific had strengthened the case for a permanent ban… While some humpback stocks were thriving, Sir Geoffrey said it was impossible to know whether Japanese harpoons would strike these whales, or the highly depleted Oceania stock.

Also at the meeting, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw) released a report compiled by ‘Economists at Large‘ showing that whale watching generates far more money than whale hunting. It calculated that, worldwide, the whale-watching industry now generates about $2.1bn per year, whale-watching has doubled in the past decade, and in 2008, 13 million people went to sea to watch cetaceans in 119 countries.

“Whale watching is clearly more environmentally sustainable and economically beneficial than hunting, and whales are worth far more alive than dead,” [Ifaw] told BBC News.

Iceland’s delegate, predictably responded that the two industries (whale-watching and whale-killing) were compatible and could grow together. Perhaps they believe that the classical economics theory can be universally applied – i.e. that the price commanded by whale-watchers will rise as whales get rarer. And an extinct whale is very very valuable. Oh dear. In actually fact they conflict directly, as illustrated in the 2006 incidence where tourists got the honour of watching a Norwegian boat harpooning a minke whale.

An earlier report commissioned by WWF, argued that that the Japanese and Norwegian hunts were a net cost to their governments, i.e. were an economic liability as well as an environmental liability.

So, it seems time to redefine the verb ‘whaling’ from “the act of hunting and killing a whale, that is subsidised by governments” to “the act of locating and watching whales, that makes money for sustainable tourism and is nicer to whales”. With that definition in mind, sit back, relax and enjoy a Kiwi classic:

A huge application to genetically engineer a wide range of animals, plus human and monkey cells, side-steps a government promise to deal with GE applications on a case by case basis.

This is exactly what the Court upheld in accepting the appeal of GE Free NZ (see video interview with Jon Carapiet), with the Judge saying, “I have concluded the applications are simply too generic to enable the risk assessment called for by HSNO to be meaningfully undertaken”. The ODT editorialised:

what the ruling appears to reveal is that the careful case-by-case assessment of the risks and opportunities of individual applications, as anticipated by the Royal Commission into GE in 2001, and by subsequent governments, had been jettisoned in favour of a somewhat “wholesale” approach.

Under pressure from the Greens at the time of the application, AgResearch issued a mile-long press release trying to justify and defend its application. But in doing so it let the cat (and the proposed GE llamas, alpacas, sheep, cows, pigs, goats, buffalo, deer and horses!) out of the bag. It admitted to “a less than 9 percent live birth rate, aborted deformed foetuses, deformed calves, gangrenous udders and ‘animals suffering from respiratory conditions’”.

However, arguably more disingenuous than the detail of the application was AgResearch’s claim that genetic engineering “can enhance New Zealand’s clean, green image”. Huh?

Quite the contrary. As the ODT points out:

“[many] scientists, agronomists, economists and marketers… are forceful in their position that New Zealand has more to lose than to gain if its “green” image as a producer and supplier of wholesome foods is contaminated by the spectre of GE produce. The world movement in natural and organic foods is on the increase. Consumer concerns over the ingredients of foodstuff continue to rise.”

This is underlined by Fonterra and Federated Farmers themselves. Fonterra has recently been ramping up advertising for more organic milk producers to meet demand. And Federated Farmers recently used NZ’s GE-Free status to promote NZ dairy when responding to a British campaign to denigrate NZ dairy products. The Feds said:

Grazing outdoors on GM free grass and natural winter feed makes for happy cows and fantastic quality milk.  This milk is crafted into quality butter and other dairy products.

We can’t have it both ways. And like the fact one can’t be half pregnant, New Zealand is either GE Free and able to produce and market healthy, natural and quality food at premium prices; or we are GE, and competing in the race to the bottom of the food chain.

While the High Court ruled on process – that the letter of the Act had not been followed in this instance – the broader issue remains: why would New Zealand wish to sacrifice its premium brand that is so crucial to maintaining prices and sales of our agriultural exports in a recession? And why would we want to put our wonderful environment and the great examples of sustainable agriculture at risk? Not to mention the acceptability of torturous experimentation on the animals.

GE Free NZ put forward a good idea of a ‘Biotechnology Statement’ promoting research and innovation that “builds on our existing reputation and supports clean, natural and sustainable production” rather than sacrifices this for GE experiments.

Last year’s poll by Colmar Brunton found that only 27% of Kiwis support genetic engineering of animals. And, interestingly, this result was the same (28%) when only considering responses from farmers. Let’s trust Kiwis, and farmers, on this one!

The Sunday expose on intensive pig farming has pushed the shadowy world of indoor pig farming firmly into the spotlight. TVNZ’s Close-up this evening pitted Mike King (and Safe‘s Hans Kreik) off against Chris Trengrove, the Chair of the Pork Board, resulting in a commitment to random visits of other pig farms to see if the one exposed was really a one-off as the Industry claims, which I don’t believe for a minute.

I have always been disappointed that our quite good Animal Welfare Act has been subverted by the Nat-Labs in power, resulting in low-standard Welfare Codes. Frankly, some Codes do not meet the purpose of the Act, which is:

(1) The purpose of this Part is to ensure that owners of animals and persons in charge of animals attend properly to the welfare of those animals.

(2) This Part accordingly— (a) Requires owners of animals, and persons in charge of animals, to take all reasonable steps to ensure that the physical, health, and behavioural needs of the animals are met in accordance with both—(i) Good practice; and (ii) Scientific knowledge

Meanwhile the so-called Code of Welfare for pigs sets minimum space requirements of (read it for yourself):

Pregnant Sows in individual stalls 1.20 (0.6m x 2.0m)
Lactating Sows and litters: Farrowing crates and creep areas 3.2 (total area)

But rather than debate the size of the crate, the real question is whether a cage-reared pigs can ever meet the “physical, health, and behavioural needs of the animals”.

Labour’s Jim Sutton signed off that Code, and Jim Anderton and the Primary Production Select Committee (including the current Ag Minister David Carter) have not sought to change it since. As Sue Kedgley reflected in a recent reflective podcast:

“The Clark-Cullen Government had tremendous opportunities to launch a progressive agenda… [but were] completely out of touch with ordinary New Zealanders. [Take] the whole animal welfare issue as an example – they could have set in motion a process of phasing out those hideous battery hen cages and incredibly cruel sow crates…”

The new Prime Minister and his Agriculture Minister have been superficially shocked by the TVNZ investigation, with Key vowing to take action if this farm is anything more than a rogue operator. It isn’t – crates of that size are legal and widespread in caged pig-farming – so will the Key Government do what Clark-Cullen didn’t and phase the cruel cages out?

One thing’s for sure, Sue Kedgley will continue to fight until someone does.

At the Strategy launch, the PM and Ag Minister David Carter mooed in the direction of the environment: the PM said, “It is important that farmers step up and take leadership on meeting some of the environmental challenges that will shape the future of your industry”, and his Minster repeated that, “no farmer has a right to pollute”. But NZPA noted that, “Despite the two politicians’ comments, there was limited mention of cleaning up “dirty dairying” in the five key goals set out for the next decade”. Fish and Game said similar scoring the Strategy 2 out of 6.

The Strategy is indeed pretty weak on environmental commitments. However, what is refreshing is the admission, finally, that environmental degradation is a big issue for the industry, and that the responsibility for fixing it lies with the industry itself. This is a step forward, even if their main rationale is the threat to their brand image. I didn’t see much recognition that water is a public asset, swimming and drinking a public right, and that commercial activity that takes that away is a public subsidy to the industry.

It is pleasing also that the whole industry is now acknowledging their environmental impact. The Greens think that the voluntary Clean Streams Accord, by only including Fonterra, effectively lets the other companies off the hook. It also means that Fonterra is afraid to be too progressive with sustainability measures (carrots or sticks), hence the weakness of the Accord targets, lest their suppliers simply move to a rival company without such measures. Questioned on this, the Minister remained obstinate.

New Zealand needs effective regulation that mandates best practice across the whole dairy industry, reduces effluent discharge non-compliance to near-zero, and rolls-out riparian planting, fish-passage culverts and fencing to protect waterways. There’s a lot of jobs in that type of work, and other opportunities to improve agriculture’s sustainability like shifting to low input systems, tree-planting to stablise soil in the hill-country, and energy-saving technology like biodigesters and solar water-heating for the dairy shed to reduce energy demand and reduce emissions.

The Minister has again said, like Ministers before him, that if the industry does not lift its environmental performance, the government will step in with regulation.  Just how many years of woeful performance under voluntary measures do we have to wait? What is not clear from the new Strategy is how the industry actually intends to lift its environmental performance. This allow the Minister to sit on his hands forever, making his threats also all talk and no action.

Umbra mentions CSA´s as a great resource, and indeed they are. I tried to find a nice convenient portal of kiwi CSA´s and farmers markets, but failed to find one. However, a great site for such local information is the TransistionTowns.org.nz website, which does have numerous links and conversations regarding local produce, among all the other fantastic things they are up to. Why not start there and then hook up with your local organisation?

Unlike the poor guy in the video, New Zealand enjoys a pretty broad round of growing seasons and plenty of local produce throughout the year. Why would you live anywhere else?

Along with Pesticides Action Network, Soil and Health and other concerned people, the Green party MP Sue Kedgley and myself made submissions to ERMA on the reassessment. Interestingly if you want to phone in your oral submission from a rural area, as I did, you had to pay for the call yourself. I felt like I was speaking into a vacuum but for once the vacuum acted. All credit must go to the campaigners who fought so hard to achieve both the re-basement and the result. The statutory committee advising ERMA on Maori perspectives, Nga Kaihautu Tikanga Te Taiao, also strongly advised in favour of a ban. There will be no further imports of endosulfan after January 16 2009.

Some food growers are claiming this ban will destroy their businesses. It is hard to believe that an outdated dangerous pesticide is essential; haven’t they heard of more organic methods of pest control? They might even make more money if they start the transition to producing healthy food.

But this victory is just the beginning. There are many more chemicals used in daily life that need to be reassessed. ERMA has made a start on some of the really bad pesticides and fumigants such as methyl bromide and azinphos-methyl. These names sound like heavy metal bands but are in fact heavy duty endocrine system disrupters and connected to a wide range of health effects. Azinphos- methyl for example is a toxic pesticide sprayed on almonds and apples. There are also some nasty persistent chemicals that are not high on ERMAs list, including 24D. 24D is widely used in spraying weeds in forestry and agriculture is the little cousin of 245T. A colleague of mine was helicopter sprayed with this chemical at home and developed violent skin problems; his daughter aged six started menstruating. That’s just one of many horrible stories people around the country have shared with me about their exposure to dangerous pesticides.

It is an extreme waste of time to assess each toxic chemical in isolation. Why don’t we adopt the precautionary approach which the RMA mentions in a “lip service let’s not really do anything” manner. This precautionary approach to chemicals simply means unless you can prove something is safe don’t use it. This principle is vigorously applied in places like San Francisco, so there are practical models we can follow.

So the worms, tomatoes and people are now safe from one ghastly chemical. Lets get cracking on the rest of them.

Food is the shadow problem if they [the politicians] hope to deal with energy independence, climate change and healthcare because as soon as you start working on these issues, and attempt to get anywhere, to reduce our oil consumption, to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and to curb healthcare costs, you discover that food is the key to doing that. And that food is the shadow problem, the way we are feeding ourselves, so you’re going to need to deal with it.

Basically if the problem is that we’re eating oil, we need to switch, and put the food system back on a diet of contemporary sunshine. This is plausible – remember, every calorie of food you have ever eaten is ultimately the product of photosynthesis. The original solar technology.

Only photosynthesis can take the energy of the sun and turn it into usable carbohydrates, usable energy for us. The challenge is reorganising the system.

Meanwhile, our government seeks to remove agriculture (food) from every consideration of climate change, despite it’s contribution to about 30% of global, anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

Even in the House today, the Prime Minister kept insisting that no-one would be affected by the government’s flip-flop delays on the ETS, despite several members including Jeanette pointing out that forestry is already in the ETS, has already started and that foresters will be applying for credits in less than three weeks. He clearly has no idea what he is talking about, hence the four different versions of government ETS policy that we currently have on the table.

But I am digressing from the main thrust of the post, which is that food (and it’s production) is probably the most important lynch pin issue any government faces. It affects all aspects of our economy.

This segues rather obliquely on to the topic of Barack Obama. You’ll remember that last month I noted that Michael Pollan was calling on Obama to give political thought and action towards food, and as an immediate first step send a message to the people of America by growing his own food on the White House lawn. I argued that such a vege garden could work here at Parliament too.  Well, it turns out that Obama HAS been reading and digesting Pollan’s work:

There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy. I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollan about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That’s just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.

So, how about that, John Key?  I can tell you’ve been busy over the last few days, what with the increasingly bizarre positioning statements from Rodney Hide and all to deal with.  But have you had time to brush up on food policy by reading a little bit of Pollan like Obama has? I’m expecting my new office window should have a great view of the lawn the front of the Beehive where you could grow a mighty fine crop of spuds, rhubarb and carrots.