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Genetically Modified Food
12.59 pm
Mr. Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South): I doubt whether anything that I shall say in this debate will come as a surprise to the Minister, who has been assiduous in dealing with the welter of parliamentary questions that I have tabled on genetically modified foods and their implications for human and environmental health. I am pretty certain that he will already have read the Bill in my name--the Genetically Modified Food and Producer Liability Bill; I am equally certain that he will have seen the "Soapbox" documentary platform that I had on this subject; and I am fairly certain that he will have heard the "Farming Today" interview that I did this morning. He may at that time already have been out feeding his civil servants. I offer those introductory comments as a tribute to the Minister's assiduous commitment to public standards and food safety.
I want to use this opportunity to give equal praise to the national campaign that Friends of the Earth is launching today on the safety of food, specifically GM food. The campaign seeks to set up a platform that establishes society's basic rights and responsibilities, which, sadly, we do not fully have but which are entirely consistent with the values with which the Labour party came to office. When we came into government, we said clearly that the society that we wanted to take part in shaping had to strike a balance between rights and responsibilities.
I believe that the campaign needs to address three rights and two responsibilities. The rights are fairly simple: the right to know, the right to say no, and the right to grow safe food. Those rights must be balanced by the responsibility to protect the environment in which we live and the responsibility to put right the damage done to that environment.
On the right to say no, European Environment Ministers have recently been involved in discussing the framework of constraints that should exist on releasing GM organisms into the environment. I welcome the fact that they have tightened the rules within the past week, although I would have preferred it had they gone a couple of steps further and recognised the strength of the case for a moratorium on GM crop growing. There is still time for a decision to be reached on that.
One of the arguments used was that we may not be able to go as far as a moratorium because it could be illegal; that it would somehow interfere with international trade agreements. As such, it would require us to abandon one of the most important principles that has guided us through the ages: the right of countries, both nationally and internationally, to lay claim to the precautionary principle. That applies to medicines, drugs and all types of new products. It means that if we are uncertain about the risk to human or environmental health, we have the democratic right to say no and to define a pause within which to reflect on the risks involved. It cannot be right that trade treaties override the obligations to put public safety first that democratically elected Governments have to the citizens who elect them.
The second right, which follows, is the right to know. A huge amount of the debate on GM foods has focused on how much--or how little--we know about the foods that we already consume. It is extremely important that
we go further down that path. It allows the public to exercise an informed choice and does not allow the food chain to be polluted, as it has been, by GM foods being secreted into it without allowing the public to make an informed choice.
Mr. David Tredinnick (Bosworth):
The hon. Gentleman and I have discussed this matter before. As he knows, the Statutory Instruments Joint Committee, which I chair, recently reported to Parliament on the Food Labelling (Amendment) Regulations 1999. The Committee was concerned that the regulations did not require suppliers to state clearly on a product that it contained GM organisms. There was thus a danger of consumers buying GM foods without realising it. The Minister wrote to me, as Chairman, asking the Committee to look at the matter again. I am not sure that the Committee can "unreport" what it has reported, but it will look carefully at the matter.
Despite assurances that the Ministry had consulted widely, I am mindful of what Friends of the Earth--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin):
Order. I must interrupt the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Simpson:
I thank the hon. Member for Bosworth (Mr. Tredinnick) for raising the issue of labelling. I know that the Minister takes it seriously because I have raised it with him as well. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will deal with it in his own speech.
I should like to direct my comments about the right to know in a slightly different direction. One of the great frauds that have been perpetrated by the biotechnology industry on our democratic process is that we have been persuaded to accept a complete contradiction. We are told that genetic modification is revolutionary technology, yet that GM crops are no different from traditional crops--that we can deal with GM products as though they are equivalents. That is the term that has been used to push revolutionary products as though they were simply novelties.
We need to step back and reflect on the case to be made for moving the scrutiny process for GM crops from the food Acts to the medicines Acts. I have a fairly simple example for the House. It is now possible to produce a potato with its own insecticide factory chugging away inside it as it grows, thus avoiding the need for extensive spraying of pesticides. However, if someone were to go into a garden centre and buy pesticides off the shelf, cautionary warnings about the health risks from those pesticides would be spelled out in large letters. A potato with the same pesticides inside has no health warning attached.
There has been no scrutiny process that has allowed us to study not only the long-term implications for human health, but the short and long-term implications for the eco-systems within which these crops are grown. We need to establish new benchmarks against which scientific scrutiny can be measured if we are to have any confidence in the industry's claims.
The third right is the right to grow safe food. It is important to stress that this is not an anti-agriculture argument. Indeed, it is an argument in favour of
agricultural rights. It is in favour of traditional agricultural processes and the protection of farmers' rights against the processes that are unfolding globally in terms of corporate exploitation of the land and the growers of food.
Last September, David Chaney, a farmer in Kentucky, pleaded guilty to a crime and was fined $35,000. He had pleaded guilty to the heinous crime of saving and replanting seeds--in this case, soya beans. He had to pay that fine to Monsanto because the soya beans had been supplied by Monsanto under new product licences, driven by patent protection, whereby there is an everlasting obligation to pay to the biotech companies royalties on their seeds. That seems perverse.
Suddenly, the whole history of human agriculture is on trial. To prosecute farmers for saving and replanting seeds is like prosecuting birds for flying, people for breathing or fish for swimming. It is the basis on which agriculture depends. Farmers have historic rights to save seeds--rights on which societies have always depended. We need to set down benchmarks that protect farmers' rights to save and propagate their own seeds.
I am pleased that in November last year a different farmer, Percy Schmeiser of Saskatoon, Canada, decided not to plead guilty because he had not bought any Monsanto seeds. They had simply turned up growing on his land. Monsanto prosecuted him, but he has put up a resolute defence, saying that if the seeds got on to his land, Monsanto should prosecute the wind and the bees--or perhaps he should have the right to prosecute Monsanto for an act of pollution and intrusion. The polluter should be prosecuted, not the farmer who ends up with the responsibility of clearing up the pollution.
In a press release on 29 September last year Monsanto, far from being apologetic, celebrated the fact that it had 475 such prosecutions across 22 states, with another 250 in the pipeline. They were all against farmers who had saved seeds. That nailed the lie that GM foods are about feeding the world. They are about biotech corporations seeking to take ownership of the global food chain. We need to protect farmers and the public against such monopolisation and takeover.
Mr. Norman Baker (Lewes):
The hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Simpson) has done a public service by securing the debate and saying what he has said. I wholeheartedly agree with him. Does he agree that, given the piranha-like behaviour of the biotechnology companies, it is important that liability issues should be clearly established so that we know what rights farmers and consumers have? If something goes wrong with the environment and there is pollution of a farmer's fields or further on in the food chain--let us hope that there is not--it should be clear who is liable. It will not be the farmer or the consumer, but those who are seeking to introduce alien technology to our countryside.
Mr. Simpson:
That is absolutely right. I congratulate the hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Baker) on the work that he has done on pushing that point forward. We must take the principle that the polluter pays much more seriously. I hope that recent changes in the framework agreed for the European Union may move the debate on beyond producer liability for processed food to liability for primary agricultural produce.
There must be a framework of clear, corporate liabilities for making good the damage that is done. That is one of the cornerstones of the Friends of the Earth's
campaign that is being launched today--but before I touch on that, I should like to take the House back a couple of steps.
I am always confident that the Minister will have researched the background to the issues rigorously. However, he may not know that my starting point on the issue probably dates back to my mother. I remember being taken around the supermarkets as a child. I was a willing helper, loading my mother's shopping trolley. That worked well until I was stopped from putting something into the trolley. My mother refused to allow a tin of Argentinean corned beef to cross the front line of her shopping trolley because there was a huge food scare at the time about the safety of Argentinean corned beef.
My mother was an urban warrior, defending her right to feed her children safe food. I suspect that her inclinations are identical to those of most parents today, who make the same presumptions. They will not allow food that they believe may damage their children's health into their shopping trolley. Today's campaign may not be led by my mother, but it is led by the massed ranks of the Women's Institute, by Prince Charles and by the collectivity of environmental organisations around the country. They are telling the major retailers that we intend to hold their boards of directors corporately and personally liable for every aspect of environmental damage or damage to human health that follows from the introduction of GM crops into the environment. That responsibility needs to be locked into the centre of the debate taking place in this country, which also needs to take place in the House.
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