@robueberfeldt It should be apparent by now to anyone participating that the truth is not appreciated by the other side, so I am forced to apologise and withdraw from the original comment here.

In the natural world, genetic modification is everywhere and constantly happening. So worrying about the difference between virus initiated change and human initiated change is moot. Human created GMOs will be ubiquitous soon as the cost of the tech has plummeted with the advent of CRSPR/cas9 However, as people have concerns there is no reason why, in the name of transparency, all GMOs that have had a human input should be clearly labeled. It is then a matter of personal choice. Communities should also have the ability to decide if they want such products in their environment.

In the natural world, genetic modification is everywhere and constantly happening. So worrying about the difference between virus initiated change and human initiated change is moot.

There are a number of real world differences between selective breeding and genetic engineering, which is why the latter term has existed for only a few decades. The most obvious one is that the goal of selective breeding can never be to make the resulting plant sterile. Sterile hybrids do occur in nature, but since they can't spread their genes, people doing selective breeding most be actively looking to create "open pollination" varieties of plants, and they end up with the best library of varieties for their bioregion (where they grow) if they actively share with other breeders growing in similar conditions.

If a plant or animal has been genetically engineered, and can be patented, the whole point is to make sure the consumer or farmer has to pay royalties to the patent owner for seed/ stock, so selling only sterile hybrids and keeping the fertile source organisms proprietary becomes viable. Just as with overzealous copyright enforcement, the number of potential "copies" people can make and benefit from, can be artificially limited in order to maximize profit, but in this case for the biotech rather than the entertainment corporations.

The same issues apply to the use of GE and GMOs in medical research, and this is summed up nicely in this quote from MIT geneticist Jonathan Kind, which I found in Lawrence Lessig's 2008 book 'Remix', quoting him from 'The Gift' by Lewis Hyde:

“’In the past one of the strengths of American bio-medical science was the free exchange of materials, strains of organisms and information…But now, if you sanction and institutionalize private gain and parenting of microorganisms, then you don’t send out your strains because you don’t want them in the public sector. That’s already happening now. People are no longer sharing their strains of bacteria and their results as freely as they did in the past.’”

Andrew R again:

Human created GMOs will be ubiquitous soon as the cost of the tech has plummeted with the advent of CRSPR/cas9

Just making them physically possible doesn't mean they must be widely used. Nuclear technology, DDT, commercialization of tobacco, massive carbon emissions from fossil fuel technology, widespread use of mercury, arsenic, lead, and other toxic metals in mining and industry, all of these are more physically possible, thanks to cheaper tech. But we are more and more choosing not to use them, because the health costs to our environments and consequently to us outweigh any benefit they might offer.

However, as people have concerns there is no reason why, in the name of transparency, all GMOs that have had a human input should be clearly labeled. It is then a matter of personal choice. Communities should also have the ability to decide if they want such products in their environment.

I agree with these two points. However, like the organisms used in virological and bacterial research, GMOs are self-replicating and self-distributing, so the only way to keep them from spreading throughout the environment is to keep them out of it altogether. This is why, after significant public debate in the late 90s and early 2000s, the majority of the NZ public believed that GMOs should be kept isolated in a controlled lab. I've yet to see convincing evidence that anything has changed, but I'm open to being convinced, with real world evidence, from the lab or the environment.

EDIT: filled in missing words and fixed typos

Note that the comment has been edited to please the demands made offtopic on the meta-thread about health.
I am volunteering to no longer participate in any further conversation on PPNZ loomio until Sunday at least, as this is starting to become beyond reasonable demands on my time.

@andrewmcpherson What does your proposal have to do with GMO?
What does your proposal actually mean? How does the outcome you formulated relate to the proposal, the comments being made by those participating or the discussion in this thread?

And most importantly: on what grounds do you postulate that "no policy is to be made regarding GM technology by the party"?