Consumer opposition in Australia last month forced its three biggest poultry producers to stop using imported, genetically modified feed to fatten the 450 million birds they put on the market each year.

Inghams, Bartter-Steggles and Baiada changed course after thousands of letters, faxes and telephone calls from angry consumers in a campaign spearheaded by Greenpeace. It was a clear win for the anti-GMO (genetically modified organisms) campaign.

“It would not have happened without a hell of a lot of people doing a lot of leg work, writing and calling the companies,” said Bob Phelps of GeneEthics Network. He is a long-time opponent of genetic engineering.

The Australian government, meanwhile, has sought to convince people to embrace GMO.

“Greenpeace’s recent campaign to intimidate Australian poultry producers into excluding GMO soy from feed had no basis in science,” Agriculture Minister Warren Truss told Reuters. Australia’s poultry industry is relatively small and caters mainly to the domestic market.

But for canola, it is the second biggest exporter, after Canada.

Concern from state governments has blocked Australia from growing its first commercial GMO canola crop, although the federal government approved it for commercial release in December 2003. Most provincial governments have the bans in place until 2006, with some extending the bans until 2009.

State bans are based on concerns that GMO canola would jeopardize Australia’s exports of conventionally produced canola.

Phelps said the decision to stop the use of GMO feed for chickens, which can be fed canola meal, would make it even more difficult for the ban on commercial GMO canola to be lifted.

But federal government officials said the country’s farmers would suffer in the longer term because they were falling behind their counterparts in other key farm commodity producing nations.

“How much longer can Australian farmers compete if unscientific state bans on genetically modified organisms deny access to higher yielding, pest- and disease-resistant, drought-tolerant plant varieties?” Truss said.

IN A FIX

Farmers said it is difficult for them to learn whether there is a viable market for genetically modified canola abroad unless they grow such crops.

“State governments want answers to trade questions if they are to change the moratoria. But if we have the moratoria that don’t allow us to grow anything, how do we generate data to answer the questions?” asked Paula Fitzgerald, executive director of farmer-backed group Agrifood Awareness.

U.S. biotech giant Monsanto Co., which pioneered GMO crops in Australia by introducing a transgenic cotton crop eight years ago, pulled out of trials on GMO canola in Australia late last year.

A company spokesman said it was waiting and watching developments. Its rival Bayer CropScience, meanwhile, is continuing with trials on about 100 hectares of land.

“We’re not really able to predict commercialization,” said Susie O’Neill, general manager of the science division for Bayer CropScience Australia.

A variety of industry and scientific organizations are conducting field trials for GMO rice, grape vines, sugarcane, pineapples and some other crops.

But trade analysts said the prospect of these crops moving close to commercial production is even more remote than it is for canola.

Australia’s importance in the GMO debate is mainly as a producer. Its cotton crop is now 80 percent GMO.

“There’s a lot going beyond the basic glass house-and-lab work. The question is when they’re scientifically at a point for commercialization,” Fitzgerald said.