2 May 2019  

Joint Media Release with Federated Farmers

The Forest Owners Association and Federated Farmers congratulate The Opportunities Party for its balanced and sensible gene editing policy, which recognises the significant economic and environmental benefits gene editing technology can provide.

The presidents of the respective organisations, Peter Weir and Katie Milne, say the time for an informed public debate is well overdue as genetic technologies have changed dramatically in recent years and their safety and value has been proven overseas.

The Top Party is quite right in highlighting the fact that modern genetic science is no longer about introducing the genetics of one species into another quite different species, the two presidents say.

“Gene editing is a sophisticated process of deliberately achieving with a high degree of certainty what nature and other methods of genetic manipulation achieve randomly,” Weir says.

The rest of the release can be found on the Federated Farmers website.