On the 30 July the report of NZ's Royal Commission should be published. What kind of future will it offer?

"An intense public debate and political drama has been spawned by the birth of these mutant calves - cloned calves that carry human genes."

"We're moving into a territory that's so new, that how can we even do the work of evaluating what the risks are? We don't even know, we don't have a clue."

"They had a human DNA component with it, and for us it's like eating the Chuhakapu, or the deceased remains of a human..."

"...people really haven't got any faith that the royal commission is going to come out and say, "Well, we're going to stop GE." They're not, it would be good if they were, but they're not, so people are going to have to stop it themselves..."

"People must have a voice, and if they're not given a voice they will take it, and I support that, because for me the right of people to participate in what's going on in their country is paramount."

---

Frankenstein's Farm
http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/dateline_set.html
25 July, 2001

The world's first major report into genetic engineering will be handed down  this Friday. The New Zealand Government will receive the findings of its  Royal Commission into Genetic Modification. It's the only complete report of  its type so far and a document eagerly awaited by governments, multinationals  and environmentalists everywhere. On the same day, anti-genetic engineering rallies are being staged nationwide. Campaigners are demanding that New Zealand build on its green, nuclear- free image by becoming a GE-free zone. Helen Clark's Labour Government must now set the rules on an issue which has had a powerful impact in New Zealand and is sending strong signals around the globe. Nick Lazaredes reports.

REPORTER: NICK LAZAREDES 

MARK EDEN, ANIMAL ACTION: They're not being open, they're using our money, and I think it's quite justified that people break the law to stop these genetic experiments.  

DR BAS WALKER, ERMA: I guess what you have to do is examine your own  conscience and say, "Am I comfortable to withstand the judgment of history in 20 years time over the things we've done right now?"  

NANDOR TANCZOS, NZ GREENS MP: The movement to oppose GE is a global movement, working largely through the Internet and on the ground through the direct action and grassroots movements around the world, and it”šÄôs ordinary people who have taken on the might of some of the biggest corporations in the world, as well as the might of their own governments and they are actually rolling it back.   

Until recently, most New Zealanders were blissfully unaware of genetic  engineering or GE. Nowadays, few have failed to stop and ponder the issue. An intense public debate and political drama has been spawned by the birth of these mutant calves - cloned calves that carry human genes.

The drama began with another mysterious birth in Scotland. When Dolly the cloned sheep was first introduced to the media at Edinburgh's Roslin Institute, her creator Ian Wilmut was already well-advanced with his plans to create genetically modified cloned animals. Since then, biotech companies have been delving into the genetic unknown with experiments mixing human and animal DNA. They want to demonstrate to the world that crossing the species barrier is a good step forward. And New Zealand is at the heart of their plans.   

DR DAVID WELLS, AGRESEARCH: Dolly opened the floodgates in terms of what  potential opportunities there were for science, what potential applications there were for agriculture and medicine, and the enormous controversy of what was appropriate, where were the boundaries, what was the potential for abuse in humans. So, it's certainly broadened our perspectives, you know. Out of the laboratory into the wider community and to very much a social context.   

David Wells is a graduate of Roslin and one of Ian Wilmut's more famous  proteges. He's also the architect of New Zealand's notorious mutant cows. Agresearch is New Zealand's Agricultural Research Institute, with a network of laboratories involved in top secret genetic engineering research, but Dr Wells is worried that the public controversy over GE is hindering his progress.   

DAVID WELLS: Clearly there has been more concern aired towards genetic  engineering and certainly that has stymied our ability to put in place the research that we have wanted, and that is undoubtedly affecting our ability to do science and compete with some North American groups.   

This is the Agresearch facility which has been dubbed 'Frankenstein's Farm', the location where David Wells is already creating what are known as genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. The Agresearch program has managed to cheat nature and create in a few years what could never be achieved in millions of years of evolution, by modifying the genetic material of an animal and then cloning it. In an attempt to treat neurological disorders like multiple sclerosis, scientists copy a human gene called the MBP gene and insert that into the cell of a Frisian cow.

This gene enables the human body to manufacture myelin, the material surrounding nerve cells, which is lacking in sufferers of multiple sclerosis. The cow cell with its added human gene is then inserted into an unfertilised cow egg which has had all of its genetic material removed. With a little help from scientists, that cloned and genetically modified egg becomes an embryo. The resulting transgenic calf should produce milk which contains human myelin protein - the object of the exercise in the first place.   

DAVID WELLS: I feel very comfortable with it because it is in a secure  research environment. We have approval from ERMA to conduct the experiment in a containment facility, and it is all about basic research, determining whether we can get expression of that human protein in the milk of livestock. That was the first step, so I see it as very exciting.  

NANDOR TANCZOS: The risks are so unknown, and in fact I think in many ways the risks are so unknowable. We're moving into a territory that's so new, that how can we even do the work of evaluating what the risks are. We don't even know, we don't have a clue. We couldn't possibly have a clue.  

RICHARD LONG, NETWORK ONE NEWS (reading news): A police investigation is under way after a crop of genetically modified potatoes was destroyed near Christchurch.   

Nandor Tanczos traces back the origins of the anti-GE campaign to the attack on the Christchurch GM potato crop.   

NANDOR TANCZOS: It hit the headlines in a massive way, and for the first time it was on the front page of the papers. It was on the news, it was on the current affairs programs and it was really the first time that a lot of people in the public had even heard of the issue, and once they heard about it, they were like, "Who, what's going on?"   

He's in his mid-30s, a committed Rastafarian, a radical environmental  activist and a member of New Zealand's parliament. With skateboard skills which none of his fellow parliamentarians can match, he's captured public attention and strong support from young disaffected voters.   

NANDOR TANCZOS (in parliamentary chamber): I give greetings to each and  everyone in the name of the creator, the most high Ja Rastafarai.   

He's managed to create quite a stir in Wellington's parliamentary chamber and he attributes his political success to his fight to keep New Zealand GE-free. During the 1999 election the Greens adopted the anti-GE message as their campaign mantra and the voters rewarded their efforts - delivering them six seats and the balance of power in parliament - a frustrating result for Helen Clark's new Labour Government.   

NANDOR TANCZOS: Certainly a lot of Green Party support in the election came from the GE issue, because we were the only political party that was prepared to stand up and even speak on the issue. Other political parties were either totally in support for big business and that whole thing, or were wavering - they weren't sure what to do. But the Green Party was the only party that was prepared to stand up and say, "We don't think this is right, and we demand that the people of this country have a say."  

NANDOR TANCZOS: (At rally): I am furious that I have to campaign to know what we are eating. It's a fundamental human right...  

The drama isn't just confined to politics. There's been a big rise in direct action against genetic engineering. In just a few years, at least a dozen radical action groups have been established. Today in an Auckland supermarket, activists are targeting groceries, relabelling chickens, biscuits and margarine with special stickers, warning customers that their dinner may be genetically modified. No-one here seems to find this at all unusual.   

ACTIVIST IN SUPERMARKET: With Tegel chickens, one of the key issues is animal feed. Tegel is the biggest importer of genetically engineered soyants in New Zealand. Poultry is a classic target for GE feeds and stuff, yeah. Let's move on, they're watching us. Consumers are ringing up and saying "Hey, I don't want to be eating GE food. I don't want my kids eating GE food," and that's what it all comes back to. There's been no long-term testing of the effects of GE foods on humans or animals, so we're all basically all guinea pigs in the experiment as to what are the effects of GE.   

As direct action goes, perhaps it seems a little tame. Other activists have chosen a more violent approach.   

KEITH STEELE, AGRESEARCH: We've had one of our staff members houses, they had acid poured over their private car in their own driveway at home, pretty adverse slogans painted on their fence on their private property.  

DR DAVID WELLS, AGRESEARCH: Whilst I was in Scotland, the Animal Liberation Front firebombed the laboratories that were just down the corridor from the one that I was working in. So I guess in the UK I've been previously exposed to that type of activism.  

MARK EDEN: But basically they've denied all our information under about 10 different sections of the Official Information Act, so basically they're stalling, they don”šÄôt want to give us any information.   

Mark Eden is one of the old guard of animal liberationists. For some years he's been waging a paper war with the country's biotech research companies, struggling to learn more about the exact nature of their genetic experiments on animals.   

MARK EDEN: There's laboratories in Otago, Wellington, Hamilton and Auckland, all using genetically modified animals in experiments, and it's very hard to find out what they're actually doing. To find out about one experiment, we have to do months and months of paperwork just to get a tiny little bit out. And it's only when people start asking questions, and now they're coming out with all these lies, like claiming, "Oh no, we're actually trying to cure all these horrible diseases at our agricultural meat research institute," which is total rubbish. So the deception - it's very hard to get info out - and they just straight-out lie and they will do anything they can to prevent us from getting any  information.  

KEITH STEELE: There is competition globally in these areas, and I would  suggest that Agresearch is amongst one of the leading groups in that area, and it is our determination to keep that leading edge.   

The birth of Dolly thrust British company PPL Therapeutics to the leading edge of biotechnology. PPL had backed the Scottish cloning research, and earlier this year, announced to London financial markets that it was building the world's first medical milk farm, not from cows, but sheep in New Zealand. Its plan is remarkably similar to that of Agresearch. But unlike Agresearch's cloned cow project, PPL's plans are well-advanced and the subject of far less public scrutiny. In the shadow of a remote hydro-electric grid near the source of the Waikato River, sheep graze peacefully on PPL's transgenic farm. Nearly 4,000 of them contain human genes. Within 12 months, PPL hopes to have close to 10,000 transgenic sheep on its high-tech, high-security farm, enabling it to extract massive quantities of protein. Like Agresearch, it's  banking its claims on the theory that the extracted protein could provide relief for sufferers of hereditary emphysema or cystic fibrosis.

Curiously enough, the human component of PPL's transgenic farm had its origins many years ago, on the other side of the world. Copenhagen in the mid-80s -- at around this time, a young Danish woman - we don't know her name - agreed to donate a blood sample at a medical clinic. The woman who gave that blood sample could hardly have imagined the bizarre experiment nearly two decades on in which her genes would be used, her stored DNA transported more than halfway across the world and injected into these sheep. Even now that this transgenic farm is reaching the capacity for full commercial production, she's never been informed. Transgenics is a hit-and-miss business - for all the healthy sheep on this farm, we've been told of an unusually high number of miscarriages, dead sheep, and those born with genetic weaknesses. But PPL wastes no time disposing of its transgenic mistakes. They've imported a second-hand pet crematorium from Australia to do the job onsite and in quarantine. The company maintains that its research efforts are safe and pose no long-term risk to people or the environment. But for many New Zealanders there is more at stake than just public health.   

JESSICA HUTCHINS, MAORI WOMEN'S COLLECTIVE: It's a debate that has the potential to disrupt our lineage, our genealogy. It's a debate that has the potential to impact on our cultural practices. It's a debate that totally rejects our way of knowing, or Maori way of science and understanding the natural world, so it's hugely important.   

Maori rights activist and expert on indigenous resources Jessica Hutchins believes that Maori people and their lands are seriously threatened by New Zealand's biotech industry's meddling with DNA.   

JESSICA HUTCHINS: You know, people might say they're not modifying human beings, they're not modifying Maori people, but you're modifying things within our environment and we're connected to that. We're Fakapapa in to that through genealogy, so it's all related, you know, you can't say we're doing genetic modification on cows, and they're not traditional species, but you're doing it on ancestral land.   

If things go horribly wrong with New Zealand's genetic experimentation, then this organisation will bear the blame, if not the consequences.   

DR BAS WALKER, ENVIRONMENTAL RISK MANAGEMENT AUTHORITY: Our legislation makes the authority, ERMA, the decision-maker. No-one can appeal a decision by the authority. Now I'd have to say that's unusual. That's very strong legislation, and it puts a lot of power in the hands of the authority.   

The Environmental Risk Management Authority is one of the first departments of its type in the world, established to monitor the boundaries of science and industry to provide a framework and ultimate control over New Zealand's gene-splicing scientists.   

I don't think, I would have predicted the amount of public debate and  controversy that we've created, so I think that was a surprise. But in a sense, it was beginning to happen when the authority was set up, so we  weren't surprised when it began to happen. It's just that it's grown and  snowballed to a greater extent than we thought would be the case.   

Earlier this year, ERMA found itself being challenged in the courts.  Opponents of Agresearch’s transgenic cow plans asked the High Court to  overrule ERMA and stop the experiment. The High Court decided that ERMA had, in fact, made errors of law in allowing the experiment to proceed, and they set aside the original approval. Agresearch and its transgenic progeny were now facing a new threat.   

JEANETTE FITZSIMMONS, NZ GREENS PARTY LEADER: By the time these cows are  born, they will be illegal genetically modified organisms, and under the law in New Zealand, they cannot be allowed to live if they are illegal organisms.   

Amid the rush of emotions and calls for the heavily pregnant cows to be  killed, the High Court left a solid escape route.   

DR BAS WALKER: The task that we then had to tackle was, if you like, to  reconsider the application, this time being much more careful to follow the decision-making methodology. That was done, and the result of doing that was to re-approve the application.   

For those who had appealed against the ERMA approval, the High Court's  judgment represented little more than a rap on the knuckles for ERMA, rather than any victory against GE scientists.   

JACKI AMOHANGA, WAIRERE COMMUNITY: One of the crucial questions for me was - "Has the human donor actually given permission for their DNA - or the copy of their DNA - to be used for this type of experiment?" Because for us, it has the potential to cause a spiritual imbalance.   

On the banks of the Waikato River in Hamilton, the local Wairere people have been replanting native trees which they use in traditional medicine. Alarmed by the Agresearch plan to clone animals containing human DNA on their traditional land, local Wairere elders called on Jacki Amohanga to help them take on the scientists.   

JACKI AMOHANGA: The problem I had with that is that we were dealing with  genetically modified materials, that we didn”šÄôt know what type of bacteria or viruses could be created as a result of the scientific research. And so I was pretty concerned about them reaching into the underground watertable and the underground watertable feeds into the Waikato River where we get our drinking water.   

But despite local Maori objections, ERMA judged the Agresearch experiment as safe and not likely to pose any risk of contamination. Being within  Hamilton's city boundaries, the Agresearch scientists did have to carefully consider how to dispose of their transgenic mistakes, and their dead cows. Like the PPL transgenic sheep farm further south, scientists had also planned to cremate the remains, but the Wairere people said no.   

JACKI AMOHANGA: They had a human DNA component with it, and for us it's like eating the Chuhakapu, or the deceased remains of a human, by the mere fact that it's discharged to the air in a residential area, where people in that residential area can breathe it in. So it's like eating those deceased people.  

DR BAS WALKER: The view that's been taken by some Maori, at any rate, has been that they simply don't like the technology at all. They object on  spiritual grounds to the whole notion of genetic modification. Now that makes decision-making extraordinarily difficult,because you’re dealing with very strongly held views that can't really be reconciled.  

TV NEWS: Three new controversial calves are under tight security at Waikato's Ruakura Research Centre. They've just been born to parents who won a permanent stay of execution last month.   

Few recent human births in New Zealand have provoked as much interest as the birth of this trio. It took 48 miscarriages before scientists finally  produced these cloned Frisian calves with human genes. According to the ERMA rules, they'll live out their entire life on the clone farm, but they won't be alone for long. Agresearch is already busy creating hundreds of new clones just like them. Opponents of the clone farm are concerned that the experiment is simply a pretext for creating designer milks and dairy products. At Victoria University in Wellington the anti-GE roadshow has been gathering pace, as the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification prepares its findings. These enthusiastic young campaigners are hoping that public pressure will eventually force out the gene fusing scientists. Just down the hill from the university, in New Zealand's parliament building, the mood is more reserved.  

Most political analysts here are certain that in the short term, the  scientists will win, with the royal commission likely to favour a  continuation of New Zealand's foray into the genetic unknown. That's likely to relieve many of the big biotech companies and foreign governments. But those opposed to the experiments have warned the biotech industry that such a  result will lead to a rise in anti-GE sabotage and other direct action.   

MARK EDEN: The royal commission is going to announce its results to the  public, and I don't think people are going to be happy. I mean, people really haven't got any faith that the royal commission is going to come out and say, "Well, we're going to stop GE." They're not, it would be good if they were, but they're not, so people are going to have to stop it themselves, and I think we'll see a big increase in direct action. Crops will be sabotaged and the laboratories where the animals are need to lose money.  

NANDOR TANCZOS: For me the reality is that if there are no legitimate  channels, then people are going to take illegal action, because it's the only thing available to them. People must have a voice, and if they're not given a voice they will take it, and I support that, because for me the right of people to participate in what's going on in their country is paramount.