ERMA To Cancel GE Animal Approvals

ERMA To Cancel GE Animal Approval s

ERMA will have to cancel its approval for 20 years of GE experimentation with cows sheep and goats, if the public is to believe the scientifiic arguments for rejecting the latest GE animal applications.

An Evaluation Report by ERMA staff has highlighted unmanageable risks as scientific grounds for rejecting four "anything, anywhere, anytime" applications by AgResearch. But this is a smokescreen as it has authorised an undefined number of GE organisms to be engineered into cows, sheep and goats, cats dogs, and many small laboratory animals over the last five months the latest being on April 15th.

"ERMA have actually approved all stages of the application 'under the radar' in three recent approvals covering 20 years in the outdoor environment, leaving the need for any further GE animal applications redundant. ” said Claire Bleakley president of GE Free NZ in food and environment.

"The scientific problems are the same and faliure to cancel the approvals, would make a mockery of the reasons being given now".

The reasons for recommending th eapplication is declined include

• The exceptionally large range of genetic modifications, techniques and traits proposed means it is not possible to identify the full range of GM organisms to be imported, developed or field tested.
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• Without being able to identify the range of GM organisms an assessment of effects, as required by the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act (the Act), cannot be meaningfully undertaken, including identifying the biological nature of the GM organism; and the nature and degree of hazard.
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• It is also not possible to properly assess the adequacy of the containment system proposed by the applicant.
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“If these are credible scientific concerns all the previous approvals must be cancelled. The Minister must take action to ensure New Zealand is not harmed as a result of colluding with unacceptable and un-ethical animal experiments,” said Claire Bleakley."

ENDS:

References:

ERMA releases preliminary report on GM animal applications
Press Release by Environmental Risk Management Authority at 10:05 am, 03 May 2010

Decision on GMD 200223, GMD 09011, www.ermanz.govt.nz

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