A lobby group opposed to genetic engineering has lost a court battle against an application to import genetically engineered material and develop genetically-modified livestock.GE Free NZ in Food and Environment applied for a judicial review, claiming the
A lobby group opposed to genetic engineering has lost a court battle against an application to import genetically engineered material and develop genetically-modified livestock.
GE Free NZ in Food and Environment applied for a judicial review, claiming the Environmental Risk Management Authority had erred in law by receiving the application from AgResearch under section 40 of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1997.
Initially the High Court granted the review, holding that the applications did not meet the requirements of the section because they were too generic for ERMA to make the risk assessment required by section 40 of the same act.
However, the Court of Appeal reversed that decision, concluding that ERMA wasn’t required to reject an application under section 40 if it didn’t strictly comply with the requirements.
Registering a decision under section 40 is “mechanical”, the court said.
GE Free NZ then applied to the Supreme Court for leave to appeal the Court of Appeal’s decision but this application has been rejected.
In the judgment Supreme Court Justices Peter Blanchard, Andrew Tipping and John McGrath said the proposal had “insufficient prospects of success” to warrant leave.
Section 29(1)(c) of the act allows applications to be refused on the basis of insufficient information.
Therefore, it could only be in the “rarest of cases” that it would be appropriate for a judicial review to be made on these grounds before ERMA considered the substance of the application, the judges said.
ERMA will address whether there is sufficient information as part of its decision-making process, they noted.
