Select Committee on Agriculture Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witness (Questions 200 - 219)

TUESDAY 23 MAY 2000

RT HON NICHOLAS BROWN, MP

Chairman

  200. Minister, thank you very much. Now I would like to conclude briefly by asking you if there is an update you have on the issue which was obviously raised in the House last week about your unintended large-scale trials of GM rape.
  (Mr Brown) You are right, this should not have happened, and it was an accident.

  201. There were a number of questions raised in the House, and you gave a number of answers some of which, by necessity, were holding answers—the legal position, for example. There is some doubt about what actually happened, such as was it mixed in Canada as grain, was it cross-pollinated, was it mixed outside Canada in transit? I think there were several versions given.
  (Mr Brown) The cross-pollination almost certainly took place in Canada, because of the proximity of two elements of a GM product, one used to cross-fertilise the other which was sterile. What we believe happened is that that process cross-contaminated conventional oilseed rape which was being used to produce the seeds that were sold into the market place. That is what we believe happened.

  202. Could I ask you one question about process?
  (Mr Brown) Incidentally, I put a technical note that explains this in the Library.

  203. Thank you, yes, we have it.
  (Mr Brown) I hope you appreciate my difficulty in trying to explain that.

  204. No, it was almost as good as the Japanese description of multi-functionality and the diagram on multi-functionality, so we are very pleased about that. Can I ask you about process? You said in your statement that the Government's advisory bodies had looked at the issue and said there was no risk. When you say "looked at", just tell me, did they meet as a body, or were the individual members e-mailed or telephoned? What was the process and what was the question put to them?
  (Mr Brown) You see, I am not the Minister directly involved in this.

  205. I appreciate that.
  (Mr Brown) Let us be quite clear about this. Responsibility for ensuring the food safety issues now lies firmly with the Food Standards Agency and the Secretary of State for Health. Responsibility on the environmental issues lies firmly with the Secretary of State for the Environment. I am not quite sure what sort of inquiry you want to conduct, but if you want to ask about what happened with individual government departments, you really should ask the Minister responsible. I am quite happy to answer for Government as a whole, but if you want to get into specifics, you really must get the appropriate answer from the appropriate Minister.

  206. As you know, this is obviously of topical interest, and we do want to give you the opportunity to bring us up to date.
  (Mr Brown) Surely the crucial point is this. Nobody is saying that there was a public health danger. The advice is very clear, and nobody is asserting otherwise. That is the starting point. On the environmental questions, the advice to Government is that there is no danger to the environment, and that is the advice to Government.

  207. If the offending rape—let us leave it in those terms at the moment, for shorthand—were collected and processed into oil, would the amount of GM adulteration still be likely to leave the resulting oil as being capable of being classified as GM free because it would be under 1 per cent?
  (Mr Brown) This has actually happened, of course. There were two sellings, and with the first one it had been collected and processed, and of course there is no discernible difference because of the nature of the product and the nature of the process.

  208. So the answer is yes?
  (Mr Brown) It is completely indistinguishable, absolutely indistinguishable.

Mr Drew

  209. The question I raised with you on Thursday on the statement—and I have thought more about it since—is that we have got the possibility now of the North Americans perhaps even talking about a carousel of action against the EU on the basis of bananas and hormones in beef, and yet they cannot, because we have now proved it, segregate their GM from their non-GM. This was what you would term "a tragic accident", but some of our report shows how difficult it is to segregate. Is it not about time we gave them the message that they are picking on us in terms of risk assessment, but we need to be picking fault with them, and if they do not get it right we will have to take measures?
  (Mr Brown) On the long-running banana dispute, nobody has tried harder than the UK Government to bring it to a resolution. On the beef hormone issue, the advice that we have here domestically is different from the view taken by our European Union partners, and we have stood robustly by the science, because we believe that is the right way forward, and to be threatened with carousel retaliation is completely unacceptable.

  210. But the parallels are there with their inability to trade fairly.
  (Mr Brown) We have no selfish interest in it at all. We do not grow bananas, we consume them. The reason we are doing that is to try to help the people in the Caribbean.

  211. To me, Minister, the parallel, I suppose, is their willingness to engage in unilateral action on the basis that they clearly do not trust the way in which we are working in those two sectors, and yet we have to rely on them to say they are capable of segregating their GM from their non-GM, and they cannot do it.
  (Mr Brown) There is a clear need for international agreement in this area, and the advice I have is that we are close. You are absolutely right about that. My officials are in communication, and I am going to be in communication, with the other Ministers from France, Germany and Sweden who are also affected by this. We will be expecting the Commission to take the issue forward.

  212. But the Americans made it absolutely clear to us when we were there on the Select Committee visit that they had no intention of signing the Montreal Bio-Safety Protocol, they just see that as a pure irrelevance.
  (Mr Brown) Yes. Frankly, you are right, that is not the way forward.

Mr Paterson

  213. You have just stated that the food aspect of this question is the responsibility of the Food Standards Agency?
  (Mr Brown) That is correct.

  214. Then you whizzed the ball down to the Deputy Prime Minister on the question of the environment.
  (Mr Brown) I would not put it quite like that, but his department has the responsibility, and that is how it should be.

  215. Yes, but in this field, what are you are responsible for?
  (Mr Brown) Agricultural production and, as the Chairman has pointed out, any agricultural production of GM product in this country that there is, and for seed integrity.

  216. Can you elaborate on "seed integrity"?
  (Mr Brown) The seed listing system is a responsibility of my department, and of course it is now quite a controversial area because the seed that came into the country was not as described.

Mr Öpik

  217. Given that organisations and environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace have highlighted exactly this kind of danger as one of the reasons why they have been against our involvement even at the current level, what would be your response to them and also to the public, given that it does definitely compromise many of the reassurances that were given not by you, but by certain representatives of the Government in the past?
  (Mr Brown) Fortunately, because of the nature of the GM cross-pollination—in other words, the GM product is made sterile—there is not an environmental danger in this country. The Government—and it is the Department of the Environment who are in the lead—are introducing testing of seeds that come into this country, and that will be in place from 1 June.

  218. We were lucky this time, but it could happen again, surely? That is the big worry, is it not?
  (Mr Brown) Nothing that has happened is in any way damaging on food safety grounds, nor is it damaging to the environment.

Mr Marsden

  219. I think the public accept that there is no danger to health. I think they are maybe still a little bit sceptical about the issue of the impact on the environment, but over and above all that it is still a public relations disaster in terms of the way it has hit the Government, the way the media will of course run and run and run with it. Do you not think, though, in these circumstances, that it would have been the right course of action to take quicker action to be able, for instance, to destroy the crops to reassure the public that there was no danger? If you therefore say no, because you are still convinced that there is no danger to health and the environment, and you still believe that there is no danger to the environment in the future, then why not simply step back and say, "Let's open up these trials", because clearly there should not be any further impact that the public need to worry about?
  (Mr Brown) The products that are being trialled, the agricultural commodities that are being trialled, are not the same as the oilseed rape product that was inadvertently released. Because of the nature of the product, the advice that I have is that there is no damage to the environment. That now seems to be accepted by most responsible commentators on this, although of course there are those who are opposed to GMs in principle, who object because it is an objection to the family in principle, but that is not quite the same thing.


 
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