Crop Corps Ignore Controls
Posted 12th April 2001
By Andrew Darby

in Hobart Two multinationals involved in genetic modification were guilty of the worst breach of crop controls in Australia, says the Federal Government. The Health Minister, Dr Wooldridge, condemned Aventis and Monsanto yesterday for letting 21 old canola crop sites in Tasmania re-sprout this year. Voluntary controls were "flagrantly flouted", he said. The number of breaches in what is now supposedly the GM-free island State was almost double what was known. The head of the Interim Office of the Gene Technology Regulator, Ms Liz Cain, said: "I think we are all dismayed by the extent of this non-compliance." But details of the crops' locations are still secret, and the Tasmanian Government has attacked the Federal Government as business opinion in the State hardens in favour of a ban on all GM primary production. A report by the regulator released yesterday said audits of crops in February and March turned up re-sprouting canola plants at 18 of 49 former crop sites. No GM plants have been allowed to grow in the open in Tasmania since a one-year moratorium was imposed last July. The report said four sites had more than 1,000 canola regrowths. A month later one site still had a mature plant. The worst offender was Aventis, with 18 breaches, while Monsanto had three.

Dr Wooldridge said: "I look forward to the end of June this year when our tough new gene-technology laws ensure Australia can legally ensure no-one can treat our home with disrespect like this again." The regulator is to commission an independent study into whether any gene flow to related weeds has occurred around the non-compliant sites. It has also ordered that the sites be monitored for three years. Aventis was not available to comment, while a Monsanto spokesman said the company did not accept the breaches had been flagrant, but would take on board any directions it had been given. A Tasmanian Green MP, Ms Peg Putt, has promised to table leaked details of some sites next week. A State Government plan to make sites public was scrapped on legal advice. Instead it will set up a service to advise people if GM crops have been grown within 10 kilometres of their properties. The Tasmanian Government has considered prosecutions for breaches of its Plant Quarantine Act, under which GM crops are classed as prohibited weeds, but no action has been taken yet. Tasmania's Primary Industries Minister, Mr David Llewellyn, described the Federal Government's handling of the issue as paternalistic, patronising and offensive.