Fed: No GM trial may hurt farmers longer term: NFF

AAP General News (Australia)
04-01-2004
Fed: No GM trial may hurt farmers longer term: NFF

CANBERRA, April 1 AAP - An abandoned commercial trial of genetically modified canola
in NSW may hurt Australia's longterm farm interests, the National Farmers' Federation
said today.

Federation president Peter Corish said the country needed well-controlled and supervised
commercial sized trials if it was to keep up with other agricultural exporting nations.

The NSW government today canned a planned 3,000 hectare trial of GM canola, but did
approve three much smaller research trials.

Those trials will test different GM canola varieties against traditional canola.

Mr Corish said he was pleased NSW had backed the smaller trials, as the information
gleaned from them would be vital to farmers.

"It's a step forward in addressing some of the outstanding issues in regard to GM canola,"

he told AAP.

"But we would have liked to have seen a larger, commercial scale trial and controlled
trial so that we could properly test some of the issues."

Mr Corish, a cotton farmer, said the build-up from small trials to commercial sized
trials had worked well with the introduction of genetically modified cotton.

He said many nations which competed against Australia on agricultural products were
starting to trial GM products.

Without them, Australian farmers may suffer long-term financial pain.

"We are concerned that we may be putting ourselves at a disadvantage with other countries
that are doing these large scale trials," he said.

"We have to be careful that we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater with trials
and GM technology."

AAP sw/cjh/de

KEYWORD: GMO NFF

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