Could the WA organic canola case change Australian organic standards?

The WA organic farmer who took his neighbour to court for contaminating his organic-certified property with genetically modified canola has lost his battle in the WA Supreme Court. Steve Marsh claimed the contamination caused him to lose his organic certification on more than half of his property for three years.

Experts say they hope the decision will lead to a reconsideration of Australia’s organic certification standards, which set a strict zero-tolerance policy for GM.

“The rights of a farmer to grow a legal crop have been reaffirmed by the Supreme Court and acts of nature are just part of that operation. The alternative outcome would have created a litany of court cases in both directions with respect to sources of pests and diseases. Co-existence of various production systems, whether conventional, GM or organic, needs to be the guiding principle,” said Emeritus Professor Jim Pratley, a research professor in the School of Agricultural and Wine Sciences at Charles Sturt University.

“The issue of accreditation is the main problem. Australian organic standards have a zero tolerance for GM whereas international standards allow for the adventitious presence. It is difficult to see why the Australian industry is insistent on its policy as it is likely to be unworkable in the long run. Biological systems can never be 100% controlled and so it is nonsense to pretend.”

“We at the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics are pleased by the WA Supreme Court decision today [28 May]. The decision today will give farmers surety that they can choose the crops they grow,” said Dr Andrew Jacobs, Program Leader at the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics and a Senior Research Fellow at The University of South Australia.

“The outcome is not about the safety of GM crops, it is more about the National Association for Sustainable Agriculture, Australia’s organic certification which has a zero tolerance threshold for contamination in broad acre crops. We hope that the NASAA policy might be reviewed and brought in line with similar policies around the globe to support farmers wishing to grow crops for their niche markets. GM crops can be consistent with organic farming.”

“Today’s WA Supreme Court decision on the case of Marsh vs Baxter is a victory for common sense. The case was not really a local one, rather it was hijacked by anti-GM activists, and the opposition to GM crops is one based on politics and ideology rather than science,” said Professor Mike Jones, director of the WA State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre at Murdoch University.

“It is to be hoped that organisations that accredit organic farmers modify their rules to acknowledge that nothing in agriculture is 100% - if they adjust their rules to reflect those of similar accreditation bodies overseas to allow for small amounts of unintended presence of other seeds, then organic, conventional and GM crop farmers can all co-exist without the antagonism that this case has engendered.”