Time NZ exercised its right to ban GE crops

GE Free New Zealand
www.gefree.org.nz

GE Free New Zealand PRESS RELEASE – 7.10.03

Time New Zealand exercised its right to ban GE crops until safety issues overcome.

The GE Issue has moved from a purely economic view to the moral and ethical issues on the health of communities and their environments.

The leaked paper on field scale trials in England revealed that GE sugar beet and GE rape/canola were damaging to the environment regardless of their use as human or animal feed. Their threat to biodiversity even made the European commission in Brussels concede that the UK could ban GE crops without breaching the EU rules.

The EU Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne is reported to have said that the threat to biodiversity would be treated as a matter of subsidiarity and therefore individual member states could make their own decisions.

A study printed last month by Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Nutrition has found that GE Beetroot and GE potatoes caused liver and weight changes in rats.

http://www.hindu.com/2003/09/17/stories/2003091700491500.htm

This has backed up the findings of Dr's Pusztai and Ewen in 2000 and earlier 1994-5 studies by Monsanto on the dangerous health implications of GE foods. Release of GE moratorium cannot be allowed to go ahead until a true longterm picture of the effects on GE ingestion is completed.

"The Minister Annette King has been conspicuously absent in the GE food debate". said Claire Bleakley, GE Free(NZ) in food and environment " Her lack of participation in this debate shows what kind of concern she has for the New Zealand public. She should be refusing to let GE foods onto our shelves unlabelled and unproven. Our children are our future we cannot compromise their future, by using them as guinea pigs."

Health impacts on people working with GE animals and crops also continue to be ignored as an area important for monitoring despite warnings from medical professionals including the British Medical Association.

ENDS

Contact: Claire Bleakley (06) 3089842
References:( see attachment for full article)

Cancer Risk Exceeds Outlook in Gene Therapy, Studies Find

By ANDREW POLLACK

Monsanto Glyphosate-Tolerant Canola line GT200.BNF000077 (2002)
Netherwood et al, (2002) Transgenes in genetically modified Soya survive passage through the human small bowel but are completely degraded through the colon. Dept: of Biological and Nutritional Sciences, Universtiy of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Pusztai, A; Ewen, S: 2000, Lancet
Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Nutrition
http://www.hindu.com/2003/09/17/stories/2003091700491500.htm

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