Posted on 13-7-2002

Hager Replies To Government Denials
From Nicky Hager - Researcher

Seeds of Distrust author, Nicky Hager, says that the Government seems to be
trying to create confusion over the contaminated sweet corn story instead
of actually refuting the evidence in the book. Ministers have replied that
the GE test results were inconclusive, Pete Hodgson has suggested there are
additional test results that change the picture and the Prime Minister has
said there was no contamination at all. These arguments deserve response,
or the public will be justified in being confused by the conflicting
versions of events. Although the science can be made to sound complex and
confusing, the issues are quite straight forward.

First, the tests. I was told only two rounds of tests occurred. There were
initial tests by Cedenco (which first alerted the company and authorities
to the contamination), and then all four companies that had parts of the
contaminated seed batch ran tests on them. Heinz Wattie, Talley s and Seed
Production did not supply their test results to the government authorities.
Cedenco supplied its additional test results to MAF and ERMA and it is
these results that were written up in my book. I assume that these are also
the results that Pete Hodgson is now talking about. The Government had
received these results by 24 November 2000. As far as I know, there were no
more tests after this.

The central issue is that, in the weeks after these results arrived, a
series of official reports (quoted and reprinted in the book) all stated
plainly that there was contamination. That was the advice going to
Ministers and it was being treated as a very serious issue. If, as the
Ministers are now saying, they later came to have doubts about the
certainty of the test results, why did they not simply request that the
tests be rerun? That is what you do when there is scientific doubt.
Instead, as far as I know, there were no new tests. Yet the main government
scientist involved in the issue at the time wrote, in his 8 December report
on the corn, that if there was any doubt the standard procedure was to
rerun the tests until consistent results were achieved. I believe that the
reason they did not rerun the tests was because the existence of
contamination was not really doubted. Also, I am not certain about this
point, but it appears that the government authorities never ran their own
tests of the seeds. All the test results considered seem to have come from
the companies. Leaving aside the fact that it by-passed the proper ways of
making decisions about GE organisms in New Zealand, if the Government was
serious about being strict and cautious about genetic engineering, why did
it not run its own tests and, if necessary, rerun the tests until it was
certain?

Second, the Prime Minister said baldly that there was no contamination.
However, nowhere in any of the internal official documents, did anyone ever
claim that. I reprinted the main Cabinet paper on the issue. Although the
Cabinet paper did everything it could to play down the issue, it told
Ministers that a new regime had been introduced permitting GE seed
contamination under 0.5% and then wrote: `information on present sweet corn
seed imports is that, against these parameters, there is no reliable
evidence for concern about GM contamination.' The key words are against
these parameters . In other words, the contamination level was under 0.5%
and therefore being regarded as acceptable.

Helen Clark, interviewed by TV3 on Tuesday night, repeatedly made this
point. She said that the Government had found that the contamination was
below the set level and therefore it was OK. This is not the same as no
contamination. It was indeed a low level of contamination and below the
arbitrary level the Government introduced after the crops were discovered -
but even the conservatively low estimate made by the government's science
advisor amounted to about 15,000 GE sweet corn plants. I stand by all the
information in the book.