Clean and Green or Cheaper and Worse for NZ? Submission to: Health Committee, New Zealand Parliament on the Gene Technology Bill 2024

Summary in the original language of the document

The Gene Technology Act 2024 is a Bill before the New Zealand Parliament that fails to clearly define what it purports to regulate, i.e. Gene Technology. The present submission and recommendations pertain to agriculture and food (the food chain), which would be directly impacted by this Bill. The submission maintains that the application of the Bill should properly be restricted to medical and other ‘narrow’ and targeted applications, and that the provisions should not apply to food and agriculture, which are broad and un-targeted uses affecting all-of-country and allof- population. The Bill vests too much power in a to-be-appointed individual, the ‘“Gene Technology Regulator” who is to be “the independent decision maker” (p.2) and tasked to balance the risks to NZ versus the profits of GMO multinationals. Ideally GMOs are to be excluded from the NZ food chain, and the Faustian trade-off of risk versus profit becomes moot. In the event that GMOs enter the NZ food chain, they should be clearly labelled throughout the chain of custody and at the point of sale. In this way consumers can exercise their agency in choosing to consume GMOs. or not, according to their own risk-profile. Five recommendations are presented.