Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for September 2005

The GM-Free Price Tag

By

The Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics (ABARE)has just issued a media release:

Australia’s GM-free stance on planting transgenic canola could result in significant losses for Australian farmers, according to the September issue of Australian Commodities released today by Dr Brian Fisher, Executive Director of ABARE.

Although Australia’s gene technology regulator has approved transgenic canola for commercial planting, state and territory legislators have established moratoriums prohibiting the growing of transgenic canola. Moratoriums on commercialising transgenic canola currently exist in all states and territories except Queensland and
the Northern Territory.

“ABARE modeling has found that failure to commercialise transgenic crops now and in the near future could, by 2015, cost Australians $3 billion,” Dr Fisher said.

Continued growth in the adoption of transgenic crops and continued development of new varieties of transgenic crops in Asia and in north and south America will potentially result in Australian grain and oilseed producers competing with increasing volumes of transgenic grains and oilseeds in export markets. This is likely to result in
lower profitability and lower market share for conventional grain crops, which are more expensive to produce than transgenic varieties.

“The current moratoriums are having a negative impact on Australia’s research and development effort, and Australia risks being left behind as other nations embrace innovations in transgenic crop development,” warned Dr Fisher.

Australian canola producers are already competing with transgenic canola seed in their major export markets. Australian producers of other conventional grains also face a future in which they potentially are forced to compete with lower cost transgenic crops grown in Asia and in north and south America.

For media interviews and comment, contact report author Stephen Apted on 02 6272 2059.

For copies of the article Transgenic crops: welfare implications for Australia, please visit the ABARE web site www.abareconomics.com or phone 02 6272 2010. This article is contained in the September 2005 issue of Australian Commodities.

The Dutch Ban Free-Range Chooks

By

While in the US, the Prime Minister announced that Australia is joining the new International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza (IPAPI). On 16th September he said,

The partnership will bring together concerned states to limit the spread of a pandemic. Every necessary step will be taken to promote international cooperation aimed at joint preventive action and to develop capabilities to respond to a pandemic threat.

The IPAPI should also complement and support the ongoing work on pandemics conducted through the World Health Organisation, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Organisation for Animal Health.

The Australian Government is working at the domestic, regional and wider international level on influenza and pandemic planning and response measures.

Australia is working to remain at the leading edge in planning for an influenza pandemic. The Australian Government has provided approximately $160 million over five years for national pandemic preparedness and response.

Australia’s involvement with the partnership will build on our existing work in the region to prepare for pandemic threats such as avian influenza. Our response to date has been both significant and strategic, with a contribution of over $18 million since 2003 to combat avian influenza and SARS in the region.

The Government believes that APEC provides another useful forum to promote regional cooperation on this important issue. APEC has been working for two years on preparedness and response to pandemic threats and initiatives to strengthen this work will be discussed at the Leaders’ meeting in November 2005.

Australia also supports a Canadian proposal to host an international meeting of Health Ministers to discuss global pandemic preparedness.

It is important that the world works together to coordinate our forward defence around the globe against a pandemic outbreak.”

I asked Roger Kalla what he thought about the announcement and he wrote back:

“The PM’s announcement from the UN 2005 World Summit summit outlining the coordinated global effort to develop capabilities to respond to a pandemic threat is an acknowledgement that the bird flu is a global problem that might be winging it down under.

What are we doing about it? The development of vaccines against the avian flu strain is being ramped up here in Australia and elsewhere but need to be tested and are 6- 12 months away . Governments and health scientists that realise the seriousness of this potential threat (including Peter Doherty Noble Prize winner in immunology) have quietly been stockpiling anti viral drugs such as Relenza, resulting in a doubling of the share price of local Biotech Biota that developed it.

However there are only 120 odd confirmed cases worldwide of infected humans, the majority being poultry factory workers that come in direct contact with infected birds.

The alarming fact though is that of these 120 cases half proved to be fatal. By comparison, only 10% of the victims of SARS in the 2003 outbreak died while it is estimated that the Spanish flu (which also originated from a bird flu strain) killed 2.5% of the infected population.

Another alarming find with possible repercussions for Australia is that migrating water fowl in Western China has picked up the avian flu (H51N) before departing their breeding grounds in their thousands at the end of the Northern summer.

The birds travel huge distances to their winter grounds. Some mingle with birds in Siberia that fly to South-East Asia or down to Australia. Just last month discovery of wild birds with H5N1 in western Siberia and the Altai region of south-western Russia made Holland ban free range domestic poultry. Germany is about to follow Holland and force all poultry indoors.

Just last week I was driving through South Gippsland on my way back to Melbourne and spotted one free range chicken and egg facility with hens roaming free around in the open. This free range facility is only a few kilometers away from one of the biggest feeding grounds for migratory wading birds in Australia, Corner Inlet . Avian flu could conceivably be transferred from infected migratory birds to chickens roaming the outskirts of Melbourne. This produce is finding a ready retail outlet in the thriving local Farmers Markets which have sprung up along the Highways and Freeways within easy driving distance from Melbourne.

I think it’s time for Australian Governments to take the next step and consider banning free range chickens. This will no doubt cause animal liberationists angst but it is a entirely rational precautionary approach to a potentially very serious pandemic.”

Roger also provided the link to this weblog from Nature specifically on birdflu:
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050912/full/050912-1.html .

Suzuki on Katrina

By

A reader of this weblog sent in the following link to a column by David Suzuki published in Canadian newspapers:

…Katrina, it seems, was just a convenient excuse to get the same tired “Global warming isn’t happening, and if it is it has nothing to do with anything people are doing,” message out to the masses. The charitable among us might call that being opportunistic. The cynical would call it ambulance chasing.

…To demand absolute proof in science before acting on a threat is to ask the impossible. It’s not just anti-scientific; it’s anti-science.

The piece is at:
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/about_us/Dr_David_Suzuki/Article_Archives/weekly09090501.asp .

He raises some important issues.

A Christian Forester’s Views

By

I received the following email from a reader of this weblog:

“Folks,

At times the church has been drawn into the forest debate causing concern among Christian timber folk, the church appearing to follow the anti forestry argument.

But now it is great to see perhaps a more balanced approach by the Church, with the Anglican Church publishing a very positive article from Christian forester Hans Drielsma.

Please take time to read,
http://www.anglicantas.org.au/tasmaniananglican/200508/200508-09.html .”

Now Scientific Basis for Climate Change?

By

According to Opposition environment spokesman Anthony Albanese the latest issue of science journal ‘Science’ provides,

“A scientific basis for what the Government was told in its climate change risk and vulnerability report just two months ago”.

And when the 7.30 Report interviewed me they indicated that the science was already settled. So how does this report value add? Is it really definitive? Is the opposition a couple of months behind the government in accepting “the reality of climate change”.

Albanese is reported as stating, “Australia is at risk because of the higher incidence – in this case – the scientists have reported a doubling of category four and five cyclones and hurricanes.”

The same news reports states,

“The research, from the University of Georgia and the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, shows that high-strength cyclones have nearly doubled in 35 years in all five of earth’s ocean basins.

“Global data indicate a 30-year trend toward more frequent and intense hurricanes,” the researchers said.

However, scientists say they lack enough data to be definitive, because the period studied in the report is too short.

They also say other factors, such as El Nino current or humidity play a role in the intensity of tropical storms.”

Now why didn’t they include the data from the 1940s – the last time the US had lots of intense hurricanes?

Who has read the paper in the new issue of Science?

A Herd of Independent Minds

By

Owen Harries writes in today’s Financial Review,

“On political matters, intellectuals tend to share two characteristics: they are slaves to fashion; and on the big questions, they tend to get things hopelessly wrong.”

Harries proceeds to give a few thousand words of relevant examples beginning with,

“If you had been a man of affairs living in 1910 or thereabouts, it is likely that you woiuld have been well aware of the increasing tense international atmosphere, as Germany not content with having the most powerful army in the world, sought to challenge Britian as a leading naval power. But if you had been an intellectual living in the same period, chances are you would have subscribed to the view, propagated by Norman Angell in The Great Illusion, that war was a dying institution… ”

The Club of Rome predictions in the 1970s – that unless we limit population and industrial growth the world would self-destruct by the end of century – are included in Harries list.

Harries asks, “Why do intellectuals get things so wrong, so often? The question is worth asking because they are still with us, still vocal, still taken seriously by many as the interpreters of the course of human history. A large part of the answer, surely, lies in the intellectuals’ search for – demand for – coherence in human affairs, for pattern, for meaning and consistency. Once this was found in the form of religion; for the past hundred years or more, most intellectuals have found it in the form of ideology.”

Does this provide some insight into how and why some of our most revered environmentalist academics get it so wrong – from Paul Ehrlich to Ian Lowe?

……………………

The piece by Owen Harries titled ‘The parochialism of the present’ is to appear “simultaneously in the inaugural issue of The American Interest” at www.the-american-interest.com. But I can’t find it there.