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against genetically engineered food and
crops
Click here to find out if any Frankenfood is being grown near you!
GE organism release sites on the OGTR's website
There is no consolidated listing of the addresses of GEO release sites on
the Office of Gene Technology Regulator website. You need to consult the
individual deliberate release documents to get site information, and in
many cases it does not provide a street address. This is not what was
promised and is unacceptable. Shire locations were public even under the
voluntary guidelines which have now been replaced by the law.
Go to: http://www.ogtr.gov.au/gmorecord/ir.htm#irlist
The release proposals are listed in tabloid form according to: trait
(herbicide tolerance, etc); parent organism (apple, cotton, etc); title
(the project's name); the name of the applicant organisation; and by
proposal number.
We call for:
* as promised, the urgent establishment of a list of GE release sites, with
street addresses ordered by postcode, not PO boxes or GIS co-ordinates
alone;
* the names of shire or city for each site, to be included in another column;
* the promised detailed maps of the exact localities of the release sites,
not just shire-wide mapping;
* a freeze on all releases at sites where the applicants (there are six of
them) have applied for their project locations to be kept secret, until the
applications have been fully processed;
* cleanups now at all sites where contamination was previously identified,
on or off site, an increased monitoring at all other sites;
* commencement of a process to assess the fitness of all applicants to hold
licences as this is required by the Gene Technology Act 2000. Several
organisations which have been granted two year interim licences under the
deeming provisions of the law have a long and persistent history of
non-compliance with guidelines, laws and standards, both here and overseas,
yet they are all licenced to continue these licenced releases until June 20
2003;
* a review of the Gene Technology Act 2000, with a particular focus on:
1) the threats posed by the commercial release of GE crops as the licences
will not mandate buffer zones, cleanup, segregation from other crops, or
monitoring of release sites; and
2) the Office of Gene Technology Regulator to become a 'one stop shop'
where all uses of gene technology for any purpose are notified, registered,
assessed, licenced and monitored.
===============================================================
The Problem of Contamination and the Impossibility of Segregation in a Nutshell
Segregation and zonal systems of separate production cannot protect GE free
production from contamination. This has also been amply demonstrated in
North America. Proposals by state governments to establish so-called GE
free zones is merely a Trojan horse for the introduction of GE crops. Only
entire GE free states may work, and even then there will be problems at the
borders. (Ed)
---------------------
(two anonymous grain sampler reports to GeneEthics)
I am writing to pass on to you an incident which I found both enlightening
and scary during the season 2000/01 grain harvest in Victoria's Wimmera. I
am employed by vicgrain/graincorp as a grain sampler in a medium sized
storage facility (20,000 tonne). Our site handles wheat, barley and canola.
Part of the recieval process from individual growers is varietal
decloration. This can affect binning,grading and payments.Sometimes the
sampling staff can visually determine variety (arapiles/schoomer barley,
rosella and goldmark wheat for example) but many times the growers
decloration is taken as correct. Varietal testing is carried out on a small
number of samples per day in an effort to encourage honesty.
The incident I am writing about concernd a respected, sucessfull local
grower tendering a load of Gairdner barley for sampling. We were told the
crop was grown from certified seed (it is covered by BBR). The load was
assessed and directed to the nearest site recieving gairdner malt barley.
Later we were informed that upon re-testing at the second site the load was
found to contain an 18%admix of another variety. We, the sampling staff at
the first site missed the admix. The grower was unaware of the admix.
Later we found out that the seed was in fact not certified, but had been
swapped with another grower. This is a very widespread practice. How the
admix happened is anybody's guess and in this situation the only real
problem was that we were made to look like incompetent samplers. I don't
believe that is the case, but we are human.
I suppose you can see what I am saying here. What on earth is going to
happen when conventional and gm varieties become mixed(through slack
handling or cross polination or whatever). Will entire bins be down graded,
will admixes be hushed up as they sometimes are now.
From a silo operators point of view, the only way to handle gm grains will
be either to bin everything together( as the handlers would like), or not
at all. I don't think I will be working in the industry if it comes to the
crunch of having to handle gm varieties under any circumstances. And I
certainly will be doing my best not to eat them...
===================================================
June 2001 ... concerning silo recievals and admixture. I recently heard of
another serious contamination, this time at Warraknabeal, and involving
professional grain handling staff. Workers were outloading a bunker to
rail wagons together with bin stock at night. I don't know the full story,
but for some reason normal seiving (for both insect infestation and admix)
did not occur (probably because it was night at the end of a long shift).
When the 20 rail wagons arrived at port they were found to contain
both wheat and barley. This is a serious loss as wheat is almost impossible
to seperate from barley, (but easily identifiable), however if these had
been conventional/g.m. barley etc. Well I'm sure you can see the problem.
Several staff have been sacked, and graincorp has held meetings with other
staff to tell them to be more alert in future ...
Bob Phelps, Director, GeneEthics Network
340 Gore St, Fitzroy 3065 Australia
Tel: (03) 9416.2222 Fax: (03) 9416.0767 {Int Code (613)}
geneethics@acfonline.org.au (Bob Phelps)
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