NZ govt seeks more advice on GM liability

The New Zealand government will seek further advice to supplement the Law Commission's report on liability issues for GMOs, which was released this week.

The report was originally supplied to the government in May 2002, but was returned to the Law Commission with a request for further information to satisfy the original terms of reference.

"The Commission has identified a number of core policy decisions that need to be made and possible components of potential liability regimes. However it is yet to address directly the various options that exist for specific liability regimes, as requested," said Pete Hodgson, Minister for Research, Science and Technology, in a media statement from July 9th.

In a meeting described by some news reports as "terse", the president of the Law Commission, Justice Bruce Robertson, and Hodgson met yesterday to discuss the report.

"Justice Robertson has advised me that the commission is unable to expand its report as the government has requested," Hodgson said.

"Given that decision, the government is releasing the report in its current form. On the further questions raised with the commission we will be seeking answers from officials and any other appropriate sources."

The Law Commission report concluded that no further progress could be made on the liability issue until the government made a decision on the following points:

• The extent to which GMOs are different from other human activities or technologies, either from a scientific or ethical perspective,
• The extent to which those involved in genetic modification should be held directly accountable for anything which goes wrong, and
• The government's possible role as guarantor of any damage caused by the genetic modification industry.

The report concluded with the statement: "Such decisions should not be made by lawyers. The ethical and spiritual issues are beyond our mandate. Deciding who should be responsible for any adverse consequences of genetic modification must be widely debated and clearly agreed."

Hodgson said that while the report's discussions of shortcomings and perverse outcomes of a strict liability regime were informative, the Law Commission did not explore the relationship between the liability regime and the regulatory regime, or whether strict liability has a role to play.

The request for a report was initially suggested by the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification, which recommended that the liability issues be referred to the Law Commission for further study.

Francis Wevers, executive director of the Life Sciences Network, said that the report was disappointing, and did not take the issue of developing a liability regime for GMOs any further.

"The Law Commission has been set up to provide good advice on these public issues and on this one, they didn't come through," he said.