Governmental plans to liberalise regulation of genetic engineering in Aotearoa New Zealand has implications for consumers and our export markets.
The push for GE is part of the international industry lobbying for more technology in agriculture. GE, AI, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology are converging. Advocates for the ‘end of farming’ are even calling for cellular lab-based food to entirely replace agriculture, purportedly to save the planet.
Public concern around genetic engineering is expressed politically and in people’s preferences which have defined today’s consumer landscape.
Politicians and lobbyists who say that strict regulationGE ryegrass, even after Newsroom published a history of failed trials on its website last year, and ignore previous field trials including 4000 GM sheep which were terminated in 2003 when the company PPL went bankrupt, and AgResearch’s GE cows reported by the NZ Herald in 2010 to be suffering cruel deformities.
