eNews
WA's GM-free competitive advantage sacrificed
16 February 2010 Agriculture Minister Redman and Premier Barnett are sacrificing the state's unique competitive advantage and premium prices for GM-free foods available in global canola markets. WA, South Australia and Tasmania are the only reliable exporters of GM-free canola world-wide and we are reaping the rewards.Most Western Australians, and shoppers in our top five markets overseas - Netherlands, France, Pakistan, Japan and Belgium - want to stay GM-free. We should not side with our main GM competitor Canada against the preferences of our customers. It's just bad business.
The Premier and Minister are misusing their power and shirking their responsibility to maintain GM and GM-free Zones in the state, to protect and promote markets for clean, green, GM-free WA foods.
Gene Ethics calls on all Western Australian parliamentarians to disallow this mad, bad decision when it comes before the parliament for review. The market and feral weed impacts of herbicide tolerant GM canola alone make rejecting the government's canola exemption the only sane option.
Redman's pro-GM decision is no surprise as he has been courted in public and private by Monsanto executives, and staged a two hour GM promotional forum that cost taxpayers about $25,000. He consistently ignores and excludes well-informed critics of GM crops.
Monsanto is the outright winner from this WA government GM escapade. The world's biggest seed company needs new places to peddle its patented GM seed and to hijack its GM-free competitors. The US government is investigating Monsanto's monopolistic behaviour that includes restricting access to non-GM seed, suing farmers who unwittingly grow GM because of contamination and suing companies that make GM-free claims on organic and other food products.
Redman's claims that GM canola will benefit farmers are as ludicrous as Monsanto's 'gold at the end of the rainbow' ads published last week. He has approved the GM equivalent of Windows '95, on the empty promises of more GM crops in the future. Monsanto's Roundup tolerant canola was launched in 1996 yet Australia is only the third country in the world to grow it - after Canada and the USA. The twenty other countries growing canola have just ignored GM varieties, and wisely so.
We expect the parliament will listen to shoppers and food processors and over-rule the cowboys in government who would allow GM canola without restriction or regulation.