GE campaigner eyes appeal | Wairarapa News | Local News in Wairarapa

Featherston GE campaigner Claire Bleakly hasn't ruled out an appeal in her David and Goliath battle to force continuing monitoring of the King Country farm which hosted one of the world's biggest field trials of genetically engineered sheep.

The High Court at Wellington has rejected Ms Bleakley's case and opened the way for the Government departments and the current landowners to sue her.

But yesterday Ms Bleakley said the case had exposed a massive loophole in the law and she hadn't given up the fight to have it fixed despite already having run up a "substantial legal bill".

Justice Miller turned down an application from Ms Bleakley ? described in his written decision as "an environmentalist of no little dedication" ?centred on claims of inadequate recognition of the risk of horizontal gene transfer from a big field trial of GE sheep.

The farm was formerly run by failed Scottish entrepreneur PPL Therapeutic NZ Ltd at Whakamaru, 37km southwest of Tokoroa over nearly seven years.

The property was bought from PPL for about $3 million by Whakamaru Farms Ltd on April 29, after 3500 sheep on the farm were slaughtered and burnt on the property between June 2003 and March 5 this year.

The sheep carried part of the genetic code of a Danish woman so that they would express the human protein alpha-1-antitrypsin (hAAT), a project for which PPL received Erma approval in 1998.

Ms Bleakley said she was incredibly disappointed at the verdict

The case had exposed failures in the law that meant a proper assessment of the farm was not done when the experiment was ended prematurely.