Seeds of Distrust

Seeds of Distrust: The Story of a GE Cover-up explores the potential release of genetically modified (GM) corn in New Zealand in 2000 and alleged attempts by the government to cover it up. As New Zealand has very strict controls on the presence of GE organisms, the publishing of this book made genetic engineering (GE) a hot topic in the 2002 elections. Although Nicky Hager describes some dubious practices from the Labour government, the story in Seeds of Distrust is let down by a lack of science and ultimately loses sense of all proportion.

In late 2000 the Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) and the Environmental Risk Management Authority (ERMA) were notified by seed company Novartis of the possible presence of a transgene in a sweet corn seed shipment. Initially Helen Clark took the position that the planted crops needed to all be pulled out and destroyed. Legislation was quickly rushed through in order to give the relevant government agencies the necessary authority. However, after meeting with representatives from the industry, the government became less convinced of any significant transgene presence and moved to adopt new rules allowing seed shipments containing up to 0.5% trangenes to be labelled GE free. The rational for this is PCR - the technique used to detect transegenes - has a certain lower limit of detection (for practical reasons). Additionally, some doubt was cast on the accuracy of the positive results which could have been due to sample contamination or a PCR artifact. Given the positive tests were less than the newly adopted 0.5% threshold, the government allowed the sweet corn to mature and enter the food chain. The Labour government kept the whole situation relatively low key in order to avoid spooking the public as a royal inquiry into GE was currently underway. This is the basic story that emerged for me after reading the facts presented in Seeds of Distrust - and it is a well documented book - however Hager has a different take.

Hager makes a big deal of the government meeting with industry to talk about the possible release of a GMO. Although I share his unease with the influence of corporations on government, in this case it was Novartis who initial detected possible transgene presence and it was their corn seed shipment which may have been recalled or destroyed, they needed to be involved in the early stages. Hager also focuses on the threshold level being set at 0.5%, he says the practical limits of PCR detection were actually 0.1%. Although, in principle, this meant the government was allowing up to fives times more GMOs into the country than was necessary, the overall level of transgene presence in the shipment of seeds was 0.04 - 0.08% and therefore below either measure. There was one test which reported a 0.5% transgene level but here his lack of science really lets Hager down as the rigour of the test is not defended at all. The story then continues with Hager doing everything he can to spin the downplay of the possible GMO release by the government into a deliberate cover-up of a definite GE food contamination. This is the weakest part of the book and I was not convinced anything particularly sinister was being perpetrated by the New Zealand government.

After reading this book I wanted to find out more about the science of the PCR tests that had gone on during this process. I found this press release by Dr Russell Poulter (now a professor of genetics at Otago University) who explains where the positive results came from. The ‘transgene’ detected was actually the nos terminator which can be associated with the actual transgene but can also be found in the common soil bacteria Agrobacterium. If this was an actual case of transgene presence then a 35S promoter sequence should have also been found by PCR as it is associated with the transgene but is not present in soil bacteria. It wasn’t. Given that Hager notes two of the samples were opened in the field, it seems likely these positive results were from contamination of the sample rather than due to a GMO. Removing these as false positives brings the presence of transgene down to an undetectable amount and eliminates most of the force in Seeds of Distrust.

Overall, Hager has written a book detailing behind-the-scenes decision making when governments behave in a less than exemplary manner. But given that the major premise of his book - GMOs were knowingly released by the government - is not well defended and likely false the whole thing reads like a storm in a teacup. Only worth reading if you are interested in the GMO scandal that hit around the 2002 election.

2/10.

In defense of secular law

Recently, Evangelical guidance counselor Gary McFarlane lost his job due to his unwillingness to receive and council gay couples. The UK's anti-discrimination laws meant that his employer, Relate Avon, was able to terminated his employment with them. This part of the case is relatively straight forward, Mr McFarlane refused to perform his therapy services in a non-discriminatory manner and thus his termination was justified. However, Mr McFarlane appealed the dismissal on the grounds that his Christian beliefs meant that he had to discriminate between homosexual and heterosexual couples and that firing him for his beliefs was, itself, discriminatory.

Lord Justice Laws dismissed this argument in no uncertain terms saying that "The precepts of any one religion - any belief system - cannot, by force of their religious origins, sound any louder in the general law than the precepts of any other. If they did, those out in the cold would be less than citizens, and our constitution would be on the way to a theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic." The question facing Justice Laws was whether an exception should be made for a certain religious belief when secular law is supposed to be applied equally. In this case Justice Laws was correct that Relate Avon applied an identical standard to all its employees (be they Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or atheist) and that making an exception for Christianity would have itself been discriminatory against the other religious positions. After all, if the exception can be made for Christianity it ought to be made for Jews, Muslims, and atheists and then there would be no point to having the law in the first place. No religious belief, said the judge, can be protected under the law "however long its tradition, however rich its culture."

Justice Laws also dismissed as "mistaken" former archbishop of Canterbury George Carey's warning that so-called discrimination against Christians may result in attacks in Britain. Carey described the High Court ruling as "deeply worrying," heralding "a 'secular state' rather than a 'neutral' one." What Mr Carey doesn't understand is that a secular state is neutral on the matter of religion, by definition. Secularism is the compromise between the religious and non-religious and under secular law everyone is treated equally regardless of their beliefs.

Rubbing a little salt in the wound, Justice Laws added "religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence." and that using the law to protect "a position held purely on religious grounds cannot therefore be justified." Amen.