Four Days to Protect Organic and GE-free farming | Submission Template
Three Bills, 4 Days to Act. Use our submission templates below to write your submission today.
Last night, some of Aotearoa New Zealand's sharpest minds on gene technology, regulatory law, and organic farming came together to sound the alarm. If you missed the webinar, the recording is below. Please watch it, share it, and then take the most important action you can before Monday 15th June, 11.59 pm.
Three bills. One existential threat.
Right now, three pieces of legislation are moving through Parliament simultaneously, together representing a serious threat to the organic and GE-free sectors and our wider environment and health.
The Gene Technology Bill proposes to relax New Zealand's precautionary approach to genetic modification, allowing the environmental release of GMOs. Once released, contamination is irreversible, and there is no calling it back.
The HSNO Amendment Bill quietly gives the EPA the power to bypass normal approval processes for new organisms with limited public oversight and appears to lay the groundwork for a more permissive GE regime.
The ACVM Amendment Bill speeds up access to agricultural products approved overseas, but without clearly defining which regulators are "trusted," potentially opening a backdoor for GE inputs to enter our food system under the guise of ‘biologicals’.
These bills don’t work in isolation; together, they compound one another, creating regulatory gaps that put everything our sector has built over decades at risk. Few have got their heads around the impact of these bills, but we have.
If the experts are struggling, what does that say about our MPs and policymakers?
These bills are not straightforward, that is the view of scientists, lawyers, regulatory experts and leading practitioners who have spent their careers working in this space. People with deep knowledge of molecular biology and environmental law and policy have said these bills are genuinely hard to understand, even for those with years of relevant experience.
If the experts are struggling to make sense of them, what does that say about the MPs who are contemplating voting them into law?
The HSNO and ACVM Amendment Bills are being framed as standard updates. Do not be fooled, they are not. They reach far beyond routine amendment and carry consequences that will outlast the parliamentary term of anyone who votes for them. To those responsible for passing this legislation: tread carefully, you will be held accountable.
Rushing technically complex legislation through Parliament without impact assessments and proper consultation is not good practice or policy. It is anti-democratic. And it is not acceptable.
Your submission matters. Genuinely.
Select committees read submissions. Advocacy changes minds and shifts votes. We have seen this work. The Gene Technology Bill received 15,000 submissions from people who refused to stay silent, and the bill has stalled at the first reading. Our collective voices made that happen. Now we need to do it again, and we only have four days.
Submissions on the HSNO and ACVM Amendment Bills close on Monday 15 June at 11.59 pm.
Your submissions must be made separately: one for HSNO and one for ACVM.
We have made it as easy as possible to write your submissions. You will find linked below:
Submissions template for the HSNO Amendment Bill. Please make a copy, personalise and send today.
Submission template for the ACVM Amendment Bill. Please make a copy, personalise and send today.
The full OANZ submissions if you want to go deeper.
This is our window. Four days and counting.
