Tuesday, 7 August 2012

Can You Trust Your Drugs?


It’s not uncommon to hear of a food item recall—a bit of glass or metal is found in your jar of instant coffee and supermarket shelves are cleared of that “batch”[i]. Everything from eggs[ii] to pet food[iii] is “recalled” when salmonella contamination is detected. Chinese parents are still reluctant to buy Chinese-made baby formula after the 2008 melamine-in-dairy foods scandal[iv]. Yet when it comes to the drugs we take, self-monitoring by producers and overseeing bodies such as the US FDA seems to be disturbingly lax.

Although 60 Minutes apparently ran this story a year ago in the U.S., I just came across it the other day on the net. Drug manufacturer Glaxo-Smith Kline had serious breaches of protocol in a major manufacturing plant in Puerto Rico. Without insider Cheryl Ekhart’s brave whistleblowing, the plant could still be putting out adulterated and mislabelled drugs, including medications like diabetes drug Avandia, antidepressant Paxil (paroxetine), and non-prescription antacid medication Tagament being put in each other’s bottles, with each other’s labels, and with dosages mislabelled. In one case, an 8-year-old boy prescribed 10mg of Paxil was actually getting 25mg Paxil CR. Watch the story here.



 Glaxo pleaded guilty to fraud charges and settled out of court with a $750 million dollar fine. Sadly, this sort of practice is “business as usual” for pharmaceutical companies, and Glaxo is one of the worst. This year (2012) they agreed to pay a record-breaking US$3 billion in fraud settlements[v] for promoting off-label use[vi] of their drugs (such as Paxil for children!) and failing to report detrimental safety data on their drugs. Abbott Laboratories settled for $1.6 billion (misleading marketing of anti-seizure med Depakote), and Johnson & Johnson may be fined up to $2 billion over off-label marketing of their antipsychotic Risperdalv.

The fines keep going up, but drug sale profits more than compensate for the fines. In a 2009 article by David Evans[vii], he reported that the total of US$2.75 billion paid by drug giant Pfizer in fines up to that point accounted for just a little over 1% of the company’s $245 billion revenue generated between 2004 and 2008.

Pharmaceutical companies are big businesses. Although improving your health is their stated goal, keep in mind that if you are healthy, you are no longer their customer. Ultimately, a pharmaceutical company's primary loyalty is not to you the consumer, but to shareholders who want the company to generate good returns for their investment.  To make top profits, drug companies have to sell as much product as they can for the highest possible price to as many people as possible. In the business world, that's good business.

Can you trust your drugs? I dunno. It seems to me that if a company wants to be a trusted name, they have to produce a pure and reliable product. But if the 60 Minutes story is any indication, it sounds like Glaxo, at least, is more interested in keeping problems quiet than alerting the public and fixing problems when they occur. So just as important as whether you can trust your drug, can you trust your drug company?


[vi] “Off label” means it hasn’t been approved for us for that particular condition or age group. Doctors can prescribe drugs off-label, and it is presumed that they will tell their patients they are doing so. However, many doctors often rely on information from pharmaceutical manufacturers regarding the suitability of particular drugs for their patients, and if marketing promotion does not indicate that a particular use has not been approved, doctors may  not realize it’s an “off label” treatment.
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Saturday, 14 July 2012

Genetic Modification (GM) in New Zealand



So I’m opening this can of soup, right? Its Campbell’s Country Ladle Cafe Style simmered pumpkin, red lentil, and spinach soup, imported from Australia, and I pause to check the list of ingredients. “Is any of the stuff in this can genetically modified?” I wonder. Some ways down the ingredients list, I find “modified maize[i] starch”. Now I don’t know if that’s genetically modified maize starch or maize starch that has undergone some other form of “modification”, but according to GMO[ii]-Compass, around 80% of the US maize/corn crop is GM and some 35 million hectares of GM maize/corn is grown worldwide,[iii] so I reckon there’s a reasonably good chance that the ingredient is genetically modified.

According to the New Zealand Ministry for the Environment, “foods derived from genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can be sold here...if the GMO has been assessed [and approved] for food safety by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ)”. Approved GM foods include 12 varieties of soybeans, 3 varieties of canola, 20 varieties of corn, 3 varieties of potato, 2 varieties of sugarbeet, 12 varieties of cotton, and one variety each of rice and lucerne. Several other applications are pending[iv].

Farmers in New Zealand, though, are not growing GM crops, and GM crop research is limited. In April of this year (2012), anti-GM activists caused an estimated NZ$400,000 worth of damage by uprooting some 375 genetically-modified herbicide-resistant pine trees in a New Zealand research trial to prevent contamination with natural pine trees through cross pollination. An article in the New Zealand Herald[v] reporting on this event also noted that only nine field trials of GM crops have been approved in New Zealand in the past ten years. Compared to those in many other countries, New Zealand farmers have shown considerable reluctance to jump on the GM bandwagon.

 Consumer resistance to GM foods in our key export markets and at home, public opposition to GM crop trials, and lack of public funding for GM research are cited by the Ministry for the Environment as key reasons why New Zealand farmers have not joined much of the rest of the world in embracing GM crop technology. At this time, no fruits, vegetables, or meats grown in New Zealand are genetically modified, and no GM seeds have been approved for release into the New Zealand environment[vi]. Which does not necessarily mean, however, that the roast chicken resplendent on your Sunday dinner table wasn’t raised on imported GM corn.

 [ADDED October 2012: See my new post on the use of GM animal feeds in New Zealand.]

Getting back to the soup: it’d be pretty safe to say that if you want to avoid GM ingredients in your soup, and you live in New Zealand, make it yourself with fresh Kiwi ingredients and thicken with potatoes or extra veggies rather than imported cornflour. If you live elsewhere, raid your garden. I can almost guarantee it will taste better too. I give Campbell’s pumpkin, red lentil, and spinach soup two measly stars, and one of those stars is for the Parmesan cheese I sprinkled on top.




[i] Maize and corn are basically the same thing. Sweet corn is harvested before the kernels turn hard, and although it is technically a grain, we generally cook and served it as a vegetable. Maize is allowed to dry and harden as a grain and is then ground into flour or for use as animal feed. In some parts of the world maize or corn is called mealie. Some varieties are more suited for fresh use as sweet corn while others are best grown and dried as maize.
[ii] GM—genetically modified or genetic modification; GMO—genetically modified organism
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Sunday, 8 July 2012

The Inextricable Links between Genetically Modified Foods and Agri-Chemical Companies—What’s the Short Version of the Story?


A couple of days ago I watched a 2008 documentary film called The World According to Monsanto. Until now, I’ve had this sort of vague understanding of what genetically modification is and acknowledged the general sort of discomfort that people have with the idea of genetically-modified (GM) food, but I’d not really looked into the issue. After all, we have GM products on our supermarket shelves and nobody’s died yet, so they must be reasonably okay, right? I mean, somebody’s surely looked at the effect of GMOs (the “O” stands for organism, incidentally) on test animals, haven’t they? And I sort of knew that there were issues that farmers had in some places with having to pay extra for GM seed from seed companies, but I didn’t cotton on (no pun—and it’s a bad pun—intended) to the whys and wherefores and links between GMOs, health, farming, profit, food safety, and a whole cornucopia (another bad pun) of unsavoury practices meted out by agri-chemical companies like Monsanto.

The doco, and it’s a good one, is written and directed by French investigative reporter/filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin and plays out like a good detective story. It goes something like this:
  
Monsanto, an American Fortune 500 agri-chemical and biotech firm headquartered in St. Louis Missouri, makes a popular herbicide (weed-killer, which means it’s designed to kill plants in general) called Roundup, which they have been marketing to farmers and gardeners for almost 40 years. In the 1990’s when biotechnology was all the rage, some Clever Clogs at Monsanto got an idea. If they could alter the DNA of common crops to make them resistant to Roundup, then farmers could spray their entire crops with Roundup herbicide, rather than using it as a side-dressing or only when necessary, and not worry about killing the plants they were trying to grow, and in the mean time, they'd kill all of the weeds that were competing with the crops. This would not only be a boon to farmers, who could grow their crops more productively and easily, but also to Monsanto, who could sell more Roundup. What’s more, thought these Clever Clogs, if Monsanto registered a patent on the GM seeds, then they could sell the GM seeds as well, at inflated prices, and made a double profit. Sweet!

But could they sell the concept of GM food to consumers? And what about the years of product testing that seemed inevitable before they could begin marketing? Monsanto approached the US Administration, then under the auspices of George Bush Sr., and asked for help in cutting through red tape and bureaucracy so they could fast track their research and  get the new GM seed to farmers. The world, they pointed out, is hungry and crying for more efficient food production.  And after all, genetic modification is just a rejig of existing plant DNA, nothing like promoting a new chemical or drug, and we know people consume DNA all the time. So what harm could there be in that?

The lobbying must have been pretty persuasive, because shortly thereafter the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declared GM and non-GM foods “substantially equivalent,” thereby exempting Monsanto’s GM foods from clinical trials. The first of their new biotech seeds, Roundup Ready soybeans, came to the market in 1996, to be followed a few years later by Roundup Ready corn, and later canola, cotton, maize, and sugar beet.

Researchers examining the effects of GM food on test animals who noted some disturbing abnormalities quickly found their research budgets slashed and publication of their negative findings discouraged. Some lost their jobs. With opposing voices squelched if not completely silenced, the Monsanto juggernaut armed itself with bags of GM seeds and barrels of Roundup and set out to take on the world. By 2007, some 90% of the US’s soybean crop was GM, and nearly 60% of the world’s[i] soy production; the majority of that is used in animal feeds and for cooking oil. Likewise in 2007, 90% of US cotton was GM, and 73% of US maize[ii], the latter modified to be resistant to both herbicides and insects. Worldwide production figures were lower but still significant. GM maize, like GM soy and cotton seed, is used primarily for animal feed and for ingredients like corn syrup commonly found in a range of prepared foods.

In the second part of the documentary, Robin talks with farmers in various GM-hotspots around the world to ask about the effect of Monsanto and GM crops in their lives. In India, where farmers were encouraged to grow GM cotton, a new blight has damaged crops and left them unable to pay back Monsanto for the seed and unable to provide food for their families. Farmer suicides in the area are common. In South America, skin lesions and a general malaise among peasant farmers is attributed to the effects of Roundup that is routinely and widely sprayed throughout rural areas, sometimes right up to houses. In Mexico, indigenous farmers growing traditional heritage corn crops worry about cross pollination and contamination from GM corn plants that bizarrely seems to sprout up out of nowhere alongside rural roads and the edges of their fields.

All in all, this is an intelligent and thought-provoking film and well worth a watch. Click on the film title  at the top of this article to watch it (its free). Food is an essential commodity for all of us. The deliberate genetic manipulation and mutation of our basic food sources by a multi-national company in the interest of corporate profit, apparently without significant regard for any potential damage that might be caused to health and—in the case of poor, rural communities dependent upon being self-sustaining—lifestyle, is disturbing at best, and terrifying at worst.

As of December 2011, the New Zealand Ministry for the Environment reported “To date no GM crops are grown commercially in New Zealand,” but genetically modified foods and products containing them can be imported into New Zealand, although they are supposed to be labelled as such. In many other countries, including the US, no label is required, so it is easy to imagine how a box of American breakfast cereal or cookies that contain GM ingredients could slip through to New Zealand supermarket shelves. Prepared foods containing GM ingredients, such as you might find in a cafe or restaurant, also need not be identified in New Zealand.[iii] There is some agriculture research with GM crops going on in NZ, and several watch groups raise occasional alarms about it. Australia has looser regulations which may impact New Zealand. More on this in a latter post.

[Added October 2014:  I've written several other posts related to the GM issue. See Why Genetically Modified Foods are Big News Right Now, Genetically Modified Animal Feeds in New Zealand, and Cows, Swedes, and Dodgy Seeds.]
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Friday, 1 June 2012

Of Dipped Tomatoes and Toxic Breast Milk


There’s the stuff you know you know, and the stuff you know you don’t know, but beyond that is a vast smudge of smoke on the horizon of stuff you don’t even know you don’t know. I know, for example, that my cat would rather eat raw steak or canned Alaska salmon than regular cat food. And I don’t know how to grow mushrooms or fix a broken carburettor, although I’m pretty sure I could learn to do either if I needed to.  But from time to time, things drop into my consciousness that I simply haven’t been aware of, or thought about previously.

Last Sunday (May 27, 2012), the NZ Sunday Star Times ran a couple of articles with information that caught my attention. The first was Laura Faire’s regular weekly column on seasonal foods, in which she explained why, in winter months, she rarely buys fresh tomatoes.  She reports, “At this time of year when our tomato supply usually switches to Australian product, the tomatoes are picked green, dipped in the insecticide dimethoate, then ripened while travelling or on arrival.” She goes on to say, “Tomatoes NZ chair Wim Zqart says the dip is essential for the control of the currently topical fruit fly. Chemically, he says, dimethoate is ‘as safe as we can get it’.” Dimethoate is, according to Faire, a systemic insecticide that penetrates the tomatoes and does not wash off.

In the past I have briefly wondered about how many of our imported fresh foods are sprayed to kill insect pests. I assumed our bananas were fumigated, but we peel those. Imported supermarket pineapples never look like the healthy fresh fruit I remember from childhood days in Hawaii, so I’ve mostly opted for canned. And I’ve wondered about our table grapes, usually imported from Chile, Australia, or the U.S., and have always been careful to wash them thoroughly. But the idea that our food authorities would require imported produce be treated with systemic sprays or treatments that penetrate the food and don’t wash off brought me up short. Nasty! Like Laura, I’ll be eating fewer imported tomatoes this winter too!

The other story that caught my attention in that issue of the Sunday Star Times was the cover story for the Sunday supplement titled “Breasts: The Toxic Truth”, which is based on an interview with American author and journalist Florence Williams. Williams recently published a book Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History. When she was nursing her second child, she did a story about the leaching of industrial chemicals into human milk. When she sent a sample of her own milk to a German  laboratory for testing, she was surprised and not a little dismayed when it scored 10 to 100 times higher than normal (for European women) for several industrial chemicals including flame retardants and a chemical used in jet fuel.

For the first time I think ever, I heard the question asked, “How safe is breast feeding?” The answer, not surprisingly, is still “breast is best”. “Benefits outweigh the risks,” says Williams. And I think, of course that’s true. What better alternative is there? Formula? What’s really in that? Cow’s or goat’s milk? What have those animals been exposed to that comes through their milk? And, indeed, when we drink or eat any commercial dairy products, unless we can afford to go organic, what industrial chemicals, herbicides, antibiotics and other environmental toxins are we absorbing into our own bodies?

The situation regarding breast tumours/cancers are also addressed in the article and book. Williams is quoted as saying that although some 200 chemicals have been identified as causing breast tumours in laboratory animals, it is difficult to definitively link those chemicals to human breast cancer. After all, we can’t isolate humans in a cage and test for specific responses to single substances. Nevertheless, she notes that breasts store fat and fat-loving toxic chemicals, the wealthiest industrialised nations have the highest rates of breast cancer in the world, and that most of the chemicals we are exposed to on a daily basis have never actually been tested for human health effects.

As part of her research, Williams and her daughter experimented with their exposure to toxins from food and ordinary household staples. For three days they ate food that had been packaged in plastic or cans, used fragrant shampoos and soaps, and ate dairy and meat products. Then they had their urine tested for toxins. Then for three days they ate no foods that had been in contact with plastic or metal, used fragrance-free beauty products, and ate a vegan diet. Tests from the second three day period showed a “spectacular” drop in most body toxins, although for some toxins there was little change. I thought that was pretty interesting, and not a little scary.

I’m not ready to completely forgo canned or plastic-wrapped foods, or eliminate imported produce from my diet, nor do I think it is practical or possible to retreat from all the known and unknown risks of the modern world, but I do think knowledge of potential risks is valuable.

I’m seeing a growing awareness expressed in popular media of a variety of environmental hazards that ten years ago we never even imagined were issues. Stuff we didn’t know we didn’t know. These are just two little ones, tucked into the Sunday-morning-over-coffee read. Good one, Sunday-Star Times. Keep ‘em coming.
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Tuesday, 15 May 2012

Two Ways to Study the World...but Only One Way to Understand Ecology


When I was a psychology grad student at Victoria University, I took a course called Drugs, Brain and Behaviour. One day we were talking about some particular drug, and I asked “what about side effects?” And our professor said, “This is a psychology class. We’re not interesting in anything that happens below the neck.”

And I thought, “Whoa! So if I take some chemical substance and it makes me feel nauseous or affects my heart or my circulation or my kidney function, that doesn’t affect my brain or my behaviour?”  I thought it was a bizarre way to try and understand how a particular drug might affect an organism.

Yet, this approach in science and medicine, called reductionism, is all too common. It means to hone in on some particular aspect of the subject and become a specialist on that particular item. It means your oncologist might know an awful lot about cancer treatment, but s/he probably has little interest in your back pain or anxiety, how the side effects of your medication impact your daily life, or what dietary and lifestyle changes you could be making to enhance a recovery process. For those things, should you mention them, your oncologist is likely to refer you on to other specialists.

And there’s nothing wrong with people deciding to specialist in particular areas or particular subjects. It is important, however, to realize that without some feel for the overall system within which that subject operates, any understanding gained is likely to be flawed.

Last night I was watching the final episode of the excellent and beautiful 2009 BBC tv documentary Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, on TV One here in New Zealand.   



It was a timely reminder of the interconnectedness of all things in an ecological system. One of the ecological stories explored by the series was the reintroduction of the wolf into Yellowstone and the cascade of unexpected effects this has had on the whole ecosystem. For example, it seems counter-intuitive that the reintroduction of wolves would be of benefit to the park’s beaver population, but it’s true. Here’s why.

Wolves were killed off in the 1930’s in Yellowstone, and as a consequence elk populations thrived with elk free to rove around the park, browsing heavily on the tasty shoots of young willow, cottonwood and alder that grow in the lowlands and alongside streams. These trees are also favoured by beavers for building dams and as food stored (underwater—amazing) for winter. When wolves were re-introduced into the park ten years ago, there was one beaver colony in the park. Today there are ten packs of wolves (around 100 wolves) in the park[i],  nine thriving beaver colonies, and elk numbers have—to the astonishment of naturalists—grown[ii]. Why? Because wolves prey on elk, the elk now spend more time browsing in the protective, deeper forest and less time in the more open wetlands where the willow, cottonwood, and alder grow. Thus, the stream-side trees have thrived, and with the trees, the beavers have thrived, and their dammed ponds are creating new wetlands for the myriad of birds, insects and fish that have taken advantage of the enhanced wetland environment. Elk, meanwhile, have split into smaller herds, and some of these smaller herds migrate out of the park in winter to lower, more pastoral (and wolf-free, if not hunter-free) feeding grounds, easing pressure on park resources. Meanwhile, elk killed by the wolves provide not only food for the wolves, but also for carrion-eaters such as eagles, ravens, magpies, coyotes, and bears who are also thriving. The documentation of how one change in the ecosystem (reintroduction of wolves) can have such far-flung effects is causing “a feeding frenzy of scientific research,” according to Doug Smith, the wildlife biologist in charge of the Yellowstone Wolf Project[iii].

Alas, there is no similar feeding frenzy in New Zealand. I feel like I harp on New Zealand’s aerial 1080 poison story a lot[iv], but this is an ecological issue with a myriad of impacts that cannot be understood or appreciated with a reductionist “let’s drop some poison and kill off the possums and therefore save our forest” approach. Ecology is never that simple. The New Zealand forest has adapted over time to the fauna within it.  According to zoologist Jo Pollard, “1080 is toxic to a broad spectrum of organisms, including native birds...[with] very high mortality rates observed in some species... Its aerial use may have whole ecosystem-level effects, such as on the rate of litter decomposition, the size of nutrient pools, and primary productivity, [as well as on] fungi, microbes, and plants.”[v] Even the targeted “possums may now fulfil an important ecological role in the dispersal of large seeds, due to the decline in large-gaped native birds” (Dungan, et al 2002, as cited in Pollard)   Pollard’s analysis of available research shows impact in many areas of NZ forest ecology following 1080 drops and leads her to conclude that “aerial 1080 has devastating ecological effects.”[vi]  

If we are to understand and appreciate and work with (rather than against) the world we live in, we have to look at the systems within it holistically. When one thing changes in that system, it can affect the whole system. There is a place for the reductionist-specialist of course, but we must be careful not to get so focussed on any one particular aspect of a system that we neglect the surrounding infrastructure that help to keep that system stable.


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Thursday, 10 May 2012

Of Two Minds


“I’m of two minds.” You’ve heard the expression before, usually used when someone can’t decide which option or route to take (Should I buy a new computer now? Or wait until the new model comes out? Should I take a break and have lunch now? Or wait until I finish writing this document?). According to Daniel Kahneman, author of the new book Thinking, Fast and Slow, it’s really true. Or at least, you have two very different ways of processing information and making decisions.

Most of us know this intuitively. When a dog runs in front of the car, we slam on the brakes almost before it seems our brain has registered the event—that’s our “fast” brain working, making a split-second emotional decision and causing a resultant reaction based on limited information. That’s a very useful ability in certain situations. Kahneman calls this form of decision-making “system 1”.

On the other hand, when playing chess or filling out your tax form, a slower and more careful part of the brain attempts to analyse all of the available data to help you make ‘best choice’ decisions. This, too, is a useful skill. Kahneman calls this form of decision-making “system 2”.

Kahneman, a psychologist and Nobel Laureate in economics, is a huge fan of rationality—the slower and more time-consuming thought processes of system 2—especially when evaluating economic situations. In his book, he identifies many ways in which we think irrationally, relying too much on the ease of system 1. For example, when given a choice whether to join a company pension plan, for example, most people choose the default option. So if you are automatically enrolled in the plan and have to “choose” to opt out, most people will take the default and allow themselves to be enrolled. If, on the other hand, you have to “choose” to join, most people will take the default option and not join—even if all that is needed to opt for the non-default option is to tick a box.

Another example of irrational thinking that Kahneman shares: When two sets of dinnerware are offered for sale, and Set A contains 40 pieces of which 9 (cups and saucers) are broken, and Set B contains 24 pieces, all in good condition (but no cups and saucers included), people were found to pay more for the intact set of dishes (Set B), even though they would get 7 extra dishes (some cups and saucers) with Set A.

In this Time interview with Kahneman, he answers 10 questions about his book and his theories.



I found the book to be interesting and thought-provoking, and a good reminder that we often make irrational decisions as consumers and investors without even realizing it. No doubt this book will be studied and savoured by economists and marketers, as they seek to eek our dollars from us with many simple tricks and manipulations (like the opt-in, opt-out example given above). As consumers, we’d be wise to do the same. Some knowledge of statistics, and an interest in the many ways numbers can be statistically manipulated, is useful to fully appreciate Kahneman’s book. However, simply dipping in here and there for his interesting stories makes it fun even for a simple browse if an in-depth read of this sort of thing isn’t your cup of tea.
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Monday, 7 May 2012

Conservation: What's in a Word?



What does “conservation” mean? The word, of course, is just a collection of letters arranged in a particular way, and it has no meaning at all of itself, only whatever meaning each of us brings to it. Each of us probably has a slightly different “take” on that meaning, although we use the word as if we all understand and share its meaning.

My Oxford dictionary defines conservation as “preservation of the natural environment” as well as “preservation of works of art, documents, etc.” The word is related to conserve: “keep from harm or damage” and conservative: “adverse to change”.

I grew up in America where the worldwide conservation movement is generally traced back to Thoreau’s seminal book Walden, published in 1854, which documents the two years the author spent living in a small cabin on the shore of a woodland lake, Walden Pond. It is his journal of what it’s like to maintain a self-sufficient life in a semi-wilderness setting (Te Radar style), his observations of nature, and his thoughts on the relationship of man to the natural world.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." (Thoreau, 1854)

Muir and Roosevelt at Yosemite, California
The other pioneer of the conservation movement in America was John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club and advisor to President Theodore Roosevelt regarding the setting aside of forest reserves as wilderness places of peace and renewal to be preserved for all people:

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike." (Muir, 1912)

Both of these men saw conservation as a way to preserve wilderness spaces for future generations to observe and enjoy, tracts of land allowed to evolve naturally without the interference, pruning and shaping of human foresters and harvesters. Muir wrote:

"God never made an ugly landscape. All that the sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild." (1869)

"There is not a "fragment" in all nature, for every relative fragment of one thing is a full harmonious unit in itself." (1916)

The New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC) support and moderate “the protection of New Zealand’s natural and historic heritage”[i] through a different philosophy: active management—they advocate the interference, pruning and shaping of New Zealand’s wild places for what they perceive is in the forests' best interest. As a part of this government mandate, they argue that “control programmes to manage and remove animal pests are essential for the survival of New Zealand’s special native plants and animals.”[ii] Included on DOC’s list of animal pests in need of control in New Zealand are possums, rats, stoats, ferrets, hedgehogs, deer, ferel goats, Kaimanawa horses, lorikeets, tahr, weasles, rainbow skinks, wasps, dogs and cats[iii].

It is a fragmented rather than harmonious approach to conservation. Obviously, it would be political suicide to target dogs and cats in a pet-loving nation such as New Zealand, but the other animals on this list appear to be “fair game”. The primary methods of animal pest control advocated by DOC are ground traps in more accessible areas, and the aerial broadcast of 1080[iv] poison in more remote areas, to kill off as many of these animals as possible.

Plants, too, are categorized—fragmented—into “wanted” and “weeds” camps. DOC is actively engaged in weed management on around 17% of conservation land.[v] Some of the weeds that DOC actively target are banana passionfruit, heather, ivy, lupin, sweet pea shrubs, yellow and kahili ginger, pampas grass, and marram grass[vi]. Herbicides such as Round Up, Gallant, Zero, Escort, and Touchdown are sprayed to control the growth and spread of these plants in conservation areas, resulting in eradication where possible.

Maori hunting moa (now extinct)
New Zealand was, at one time, a quite unique place on this planet. There were no mammals on these islands save two or three species of small bats. The aim of DOC seems to be to return New Zealand’s “wild” and “wild-ish” lands to approximate a pre-European colonization state. It's important to note they do not advocate a pre-Maori colonization state, which would be impossible since much of this land was then browsed by moa, flightless birds that, although apparently resident in abundance in pre-human times, were rendered extinct by hunting Maori before the white man sailed to these shores. 

In short, DOC do not aim to “conserve” New Zealand’s “natural” lands as they are now, nor allow the current forest eco-system to self-manage (let’s not trust Mother Nature here—she’s too unreliable!) but to change and manage our wild spaces to create something that isn’t now and never really was. Which is not really “conservation” as the dictionary would define it at all. 

Of course it doesn't matter whether DOC follow your definition of conservation, my definition, the dictionary definition, or their own definition, because its only a word, and word meanings change all the time. What does matter is that we understand the meaning of the word "conservation" within the context of any given discussion in a particular place and time, and that all parties at the table are talking about the same thing.
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