FEDERAL Agriculture Barnaby Joyce has weighed into the controversy over South Australian Agriculture Minister Leon Bignell’s appearance at an anti-Monsanto rally tomorrow (May 24) in Adelaide.
Last week, South Australian Liberal Senator Sean Edwards questioned Mr Bignell’s appearance alongside the Greens and activist group Deep Green Resistance at the rally against genetically modified (GM) crops at Parliament House.
Senator Edwards also said the new SA Agriculture Minister had “an inflated level of his own importance” given food safety regulations were a federal responsibility, through Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ).
Asked for his views on the controversy, Mr Joyce took a veiled swipe at Mr Bignell saying “if you don’t believe in genetic modification then you do believe in spraying cotton crops 17 times with (the toxic chemical) endosulfan”.
He said the GM debate had to move on from the “religious” and onto the scientific.
Mr Joyce said GM critics had every right to be precautionary and diligent “but if you’re absolute, then you’re really stopping a passage to do incredible things”.
“Ultimately, is your desire for no form of genetic modification at all?” he said.
“And remembering it’s already here - it’s not like it’s something that’s not coming - we’ve already got it.
“But where does that weigh when it comes to feeding people?
“Even breeding is ultimately a form of GM, just over a longer period. It’s driven by nature but it’s most certainly a form of genetic modification. I’m definitely genetically modified from the apes from which I am descended.
“And so, do we just say that being ape is pure and back to ape I go?”...
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