Foreign Affairs' Stance on GM Liability Provokes Laughter at Talks
http://www.sustainabilitynz.org/news_item.asp?sID=148
Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Media Statement, PDF version
http://www.sustainabilitynz.org/docs/StanceonLiabilityProvokesLaughter310505pdf

New Zealand negotiators at a conference on liability for GMOs have effectively proposed that the four year programme to develop an international liability regime should aim at agreeing no liability rules at all.

New Zealand’s stance is so out of step that it provoked open laughter from other countries when stated by Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials currently in Montreal for meetings on the Cartagena Protocol.

When New Zealand suggested that an additional option was not to have a liability "instrument", delegates at the conference were in no doubt as to what Foreign Affairs officials were advocating. "New Zealand is arguing we should spend our time developing rules and procedures for liability which would end up with no rules," Malaysian delegate Gurdial Singh Nijar told the conference. One of the five options already on the table was a non-binding agreement (or instrument) but New Zealand proposed something weaker still and successfully added a sixth option of no instrument.

Foreign Affairs officials are effectively arguing that if a GMO is imported and causes harm, there should be no liability for the party that sent it here. Yet New Zealand earns half its export income from selling food and the major buyers in Japan and northern Europe routinely reject food products with any detectable level of GM contamination.

Kiwi food producers will want a way to obtain compensation for economic damage should GMOs arrive in New Zealand and then contaminate their exports. Already there have been three incidents involving imports of GM contaminated seed and each has cost a year’s profit for a Gisborne company and another took the affected company out of a key market for a year.

New Zealand does not grow any GMOs, so one would expect its negotiators to promote rules protecting its food producers and environment from GM contamination costs that could be much larger than those to date. Yet this is just the latest in a series of Foreign Affairs stances on GM that are out of step. First was New Zealand's implicit support for the US in its WTO action against the EU over access for its GMO exports. Then New Zealand was among those supporting the lifting of a de facto moratorium on trialing GM plants whose seeds are sterile.

The purpose of the Cartagena Protocol is to promote biosafety in the transfer of living GMOs between countries (and not other biotech products). Government ministers made the principled decision to ratify the agreement in September, against advice from most officials, in order to enhance New Zealand's biosecurity. A key part of an effective biosecurity regime is provisions to enforce liability on parties that cause harm. New Zealand's food producers and its environment deserve that protection.

Notes:

1.Summaries of the full discussions at the Montreal conference on liability provisions for the Cartagena Protocol can be viewed at:
http://www.iisd.ca/biodiv/wglr/

The exchange referred to occurred on Thursday 26 May see bottom of the notes for that day.

2. The reference in the statement to "instrument" is to one of the following 5 options that were already on the table for the form of agreement that would ultimately specify liability provisions under Cartagena. They are:

1. Legally binding agreement
2. Legally binding agreement plus interim measures
3. Non-binding agreement
4. Two stage - non-binding, then binding agreement
5. Combination of non-binding and binding agreement

Foreign Affairs had a sixth one added to the list “no instrument”.

3. The negotiations are driven by Article 27 of the Cartagena Protocol which implicitly covers all forms of damage, including economic harm, and states:

"Liability and Redress: The Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to this Protocol shall, at its first meeting, adopt a process with respect to the appropriate elaboration of international rules and procedures in the field of liability and redress for damage resulting from transboundary movements of living modified organisms, analysing and taking due account of the ongoing processes in international law on these matters, and shall endeavour to complete this process within four years."

The full text of the agreement is available at http://www.biodiv.org
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Government sees NZ's future as a GE food exporter
31 May 2005
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR8729.html

The Government doesn’t see New Zealand as a '100% Pure' environment to be protected from GE, but as a GE exporter that should have as little liability as possible for contaminating other countries, says Jeanette Fitzsimons.

The Green Co-Leader made the charge after challenging Environment Minister Marian Hobbs in Parliament this afternoon over the Government's position at the Montreal working group on legal and technical issues of the Cartagena Protocol on bio-safety. The Malaysian delegation has criticised New Zealand for questioning the need for any rules on liability under the Protocol, despite having agreed when it ratified the Treaty to develop such rules.

"Marian Hobbs told the House that she was trying to protect New Zealand's 'economic interests as an agricultural exporter'. The only exporters who would be protected by an absence of liability are those exporting GE foods. All other agricultural exporters, who would suffer loss from contamination from overseas, would be disadvantaged," said Ms Fitzsimons, the Greens' GE Spokesperson.

This shows that while there are currently no applications for release of GE crops or animals and the issue has gone quiet, the Government's longer-term vision is for New Zealand to become an exporter of GE foods.

"Ms Hobbs told the House today that her Government sees New Zealand's own liability regime as the model for the proposed international mechanism being negotiated under Cartagena.

"But in New Zealand there is no general liability for causing human health or economic harm through the release or indiscriminate application of Genetically Modified Organisms, unless there is a specific law that has been broken. If that model was applied internationally, New Zealand would have no redress against contamination from countries that have no laws in this area.

"Clearly, the Government is trying to protect future exporters of GE products from liability for any contamination they cause overseas, rather than protecting our environment and those exporters who depend upon its GE-Free status for their market advantage.

"It is an international embarrassment that clean, green New Zealand should be advocating such a lax approach to liability at a meeting to set bio-safety rules," said Ms Fitzsimons.

Jeanette Fitzsimons MP, 04 470 6661, 0274 586 068
Mark Servian, Media Officer, 04 470 6723, 021 505 434