Examination of witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
TUESDAY 30 NOVEMBER 1999
DR ROGER
TURNER, DR
DAVID CARMICHAEL,
MR PAUL
ROOKE and MR
DANIEL PEARSALL
Chairman
1. Gentlemen, welcome to the Agriculture Committee
and thank you for coming to this our first evidence session on
an inquiry we titled The Segregation of GM Food, it seems our
witnesses think we should have called The Identity Preservation
of GM Foods. I must begin with a personal statement, if you do
not mind, gentlemen, just briefly. May I remind the Committee
and our witnesses that I have a consultancy arrangement, fully
declared in the Register of Members' Interests, with Bell Pottinger
Communications and Bell Pottinger Consultants. I understand that
various companies within the wider Chime group of companies, of
which Bell Pottinger is a part, do act for prominent organisations
on both sides of the GM debate. However, my contract expressly
prevents me from advising any client where a conflict of interest
with my parliamentary duties might arise or be thought to arise.
I currently advise no clients of Bell Pottinger and all my work
for the company is limited to new business opportunities and other
commercial issues completely unrelated to the work of this Committee.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards last week repeated
to me her previous advice that I have no interest to declare,
but in the light of mischievous press reports earlier in the year
I thought it wise to make this statement before we begin to take
evidence as part of this inquiry. Gentlemen, sorry for that, but
I hope it clarifies matters. I would now appreciate it if you
would clarify matters for us by identifying yourselves, for the
record: Dr Turner?
(Dr Turner) I am Roger Turner. I am Chief Executive
of the British Society of Plant Breeders, which is a trade association
that licenses and collects royalties on plant varieties. I am
also Chairman of this SCIMAC grouping, in which capacity I am
sitting here today.
(Dr Carmichael) I am Dave Carmichael. I am a member
of the SCIMAC group, I am also a member of the NFU Biotechnology
Group. I am an arable farmer, from Lincolnshire.
(Mr Pearsall) I am Daniel Pearsall. I am Secretary
to the SCIMAC group, responsible for day-to-day administration
and co-ordination of the activities of SCIMAC.
(Mr Rooke) I am Paul Rooke. I am the Policy Director
of UKASTA and represent UKASTA on SCIMAC. UKASTA is the UK Agricultural
Supply Trade Association, representing companies involved in animal
feed manufacture, grain trading, seed trading, agro-chemicals
and fertiliser distribution.
2. So we have three of the five component parts
represented here today.
(Dr Turner) Four; BSPB as well.
3. Of course; yes. We do not actually have,
or we are just missing, the sugar beet; yes, that is right, is
it not?
(Dr Carmichael) I am Chairman of the Sugar Beet Research
and Education Committee, which is now called the British Beet
Research Organisation.
4. So, between you, you can wear all hats of
this body. Can you just explain, for the benefit of the Committee,
what actually caused you to come together as a grouping in the
first place?
(Dr Turner) It started off about three or four years
ago. We were talking about GM crops generally; we recognised that
they would attract some public attention but probably not the
level of public attention they have received. And it was really
a bit of an ad hoc grouping between ourselves, the BSPB,
UKASTA and the NFU, recognising we needed to communicate and talk
about what was going on; and then, as the debate got more lively,
we formally came together in June 1998, and at that point in time
we included as well the BAA and the BSBSPA, the sugar beet breeders.
5. Can I put something rather harsh to you perhaps?
In your evidence to us you said you were "established in
June 1998 to support the open, responsible and effective introduction
of GM crops in the UK." It seems to me you failed?
(Dr Turner) No; because they have actually not been
commercially approved nor released yet, so that pleasure still
awaits us. And in this last year I would think we have been relatively
successful, we have had an agreement with the Government concerning
the field-scale plantings, and as well as that there has been
Government support, endorsement, for our Code of Practice and
our guidelines. So I actually feel confident that we are moving
in the right direction, and I also feel that some of the debate
has been, let me say, half-baked, unreliable, lots of scaremongering
tactics, and our purpose really is to try to have a calm, measured,
responsible voice in the midst of that confusion.
6. You understand, this Committee is not really,
in this particular inquiry, at a later date we will look at other
issues in the GM area, but in this particular inquiry we are not
looking at the merits of GM technology, we are not looking at
the environmental threats or the health threats, we are actually
looking just at the issue really of choice and how choice is protected
for farmers and for consumers. So against that background—there
are members of the NFU, for example, who are passionately opposed
to the introduction of GM technology into the UK, I took a straw
poll of my farmers recently and they split down the middle, 50/50—how
do you handle conflicts within your organisations?
(Dr Carmichael) The NFU has been working on this since
1995, when the President, at that time, established a working
party to look into, examine and study the implications of GM technology
to farming; we have been working on that constantly since then
to try to get an open understanding, to inform our members and
to advise our members. We still are very much in the learning
mode, we wish to know where this technology is going, how we can
best use it and to inform the farmers who form our membership
of that as we go along.
7. You seem to be an organisation which is actually
proselytising for GM technology in the UK, that is how it comes
across to me, certainly; are you proselytising for GM technology,
and if you are not who is, who is actually driving the debate
in the UK, do you think?
(Dr Turner) I do not think I would use the word proselytising,
I think, as I said earlier, we are trying to give a calm, measured
view of the benefits that those crops have. I think individual
consent holders, who own the intellectual property, they are the
people who, if you like, to use your word, proselytise on behalf
of their individual varieties, the individual merits of their
technology. We are distanced from that, saying we recognise there
could be great benefits for agriculture, in the widest sense,
the environment, the economics and the farming processes.
8. So do you have any sense of where the debate
is being driven from, by individuals, companies, organisations?
(Dr Turner) You mean, from an industrial point of
view?
9. Yes, from an industrial point of view?
(Dr Turner) I think, as I said earlier, they are from
the companies that are involved in developing that technology,
they are the big, responsible multinational organisations.
10. Responsible, in the sense of technical responsibility?
(Dr Turner) No; responsible in the sense of all things.
I think it is fashionable these days to knock multinationals,
as though they were some evil force; they are not. Companies only
get to grow and be big and profitable if they actually persuade
the public that they are doing responsible things and selling
good products.
11. Let us look in detail at your guidelines.
Now your guidelines, which I have got here, for growing herbicide-tolerant,
genetically modified crops, seem very detailed, up until the moment
when the product actually leaves the farm. Can you think of any
parallels elsewhere in industry for that sort of approach?
(Dr Turner) Yes. We based the guidelines on the whole
of the certified seed industry that has served agriculture very
well for the last 35 years. But a good example within that would
be malt and malting barley. There is a crop that is grown for
a specific market, it is identity preserved. The variety will
have characteristics that are going to be sought by maltsters
and brewers, and whisky. And that whole thing is tended all the
way from the day the bag goes from the breeder's establishment
into the farmer's field, the crop is harvested, it goes into the
transport system, moves to the maltster, all the way through.
It is the variety that is the important thing and not the crop.
12. It has not been segregated, it has been
identity-preserved?
(Dr Turner) Yes.
13. I would like you just to explain, for the
record, the difference between those two concepts?
(Dr Turner) Identity preservation, from my perspective,
is because the crop will have value, and therefore it is being
preserved to retain and enhance that value; it is not going to
be dumped on the farm floor, mixed in with something else and
sold as grain, sugar, oil, it is going to go as a valuable product.
So that is the key difference between identity preservation and
segregation, and segregation can be for a multitude of reasons.
Many people think about segregation because "it is nasty",
or as we see identity preservation, as I said, enhancing and adding
value to the farmer's products.
(Dr Carmichael) An example of segregation would be
high erucic acid oilseed rape, where it is necessary to segregate
that from the low glucosinolate rapes; and in that case it is
segregated for very obvious reasons all the way down the line,
right through to the end user. That is segregation.
14. The issue we are looking at here is whether
it is possible to identity-preserve commodities where there is
no consumer characteristic at stake which attracts an added value.
And all the evidence we have had suggests that there will be GM
technologies in the future, we are aware of them, that will deliver
identifiable consumer or processor benefits, of one kind or another,
in terms of the characteristic of the crop; their identity preservation
will be key to maintaining the value of that crop. But the issue
is whether or not you actually can identity-preserve, economically,
for the bulk commodities, like soya, is it not; so, clearly, there
are costs implied in following your guidelines? Is it possible
to apply these guidelines without suitable premiums for the farmers
who grow the varieties?
(Dr Carmichael) There is bound to be a premium somewhere
along the line, whether you wanted a premium for crops without
any GM, or a premium for the genetically modified crop; there
is bound to be a form of premium, whether it is consumer acceptability,
marketability, or whatever. So the premium need not necessarily
be financial, but it could be increased marketability, it could
be an increase in niche marketing abilities, and at this time
those are very important to the farmer. And the question of identity
preservation is not a difficult one for the majority of farmers
to address, that is one of the reasons why the guidelines were
developed in the way they were; we have been doing that for 30
years with seed crops, we can continue to do it.
15. Is it not likely that the farmers who choose
to continue to grow non-GM crops will actually have to bear the
cost of identity preservation because their neighbours or competitors
are growing GM crops; does that seem fair?
(Dr Carmichael) I do not see why there should be an
additional cost to them, because we are very carefully separating
GM from non-GM crops by very well defined distances, and the distances
have been defined based on our experience with the seed industry
for over 40 years, so I cannot see there necessarily being an
add-on cost for the non-GM crop grower.
16. So identity preservation does not cost anything?
(Dr Carmichael) It depends on what level you are trying
to do it. For instance, I can grow three different varieties of
crop, identity-preserve them all the way through, without any
problems at all and without any cost to me; so, on that sort of
level. But if I am going to go into a speciality oil, for instance,
from oilseed rape, then there may be an additional cost, but that
is a niche.
17. But are you identifying the costs on the
farm, or the costs in the system, because when it leaves the farm
there are costs, are there not?
(Dr Carmichael) Yes. I am identifying the costs on
the farm.
Chairman: Thank you.
Mr Jack
18. Could you just say a little about the actual
method of seed production? In a straightforward, non-modified,
either by hybridisation or by GM modification, you can have a
simple situation where a farmer may save a quantity of seed from
a crop from one year to the next; if you modify, as I understand
it, in any way, shape or form, that simple picture I have just
painted, then, clearly, somebody else other than the farmer is
going to be responsible for producing the next year's seed. I
am intrigued to know, you give an interesting example about the
difference between malt and malting barley, perhaps you could
just say a little bit about how seed is produced for that and,
indeed, the high erucic oilseed rape, and also how the seed production
process would work in the context of GM, because you have got
to have integrity of the protected identity from the start of
the process obviously right the way through?
(Dr Carmichael) I see it as being identical, in the
two cases, between GM seed production or non-GM seed production;
and, in fact, all the SCIMAC guidelines have been built on these
sorts of principles. For instance, I grow almost only seed cereals,
principally wheat, and I am able to-identity-preserve and keep
them distinct all the way through the entire production schedule.
They are grown in distinct fields, they are drilled by machinery
that is carefully cleaned before drilling, they are harvested
by machinery that is carefully cleaned before and after, and they
are stored in separate seed lots in the barn following harvest,
and shipped out by lorry that we have to check before it leaves
the farm. That is, very briefly, what is involved. But I do that
with over 90 per cent of my wheat crops every year.
(Dr Turner) The whole of the certified seed production
is a very tightly controlled, very rigorous process, the levels
of purity, I believe, are equivalent to the sorts of things you
find in pharmaceutical industries, and in many cases higher, so
that there is very, very strict control of that process, and that
is nothing to do with GM technology, that is production of certified
seed. You addressed the question of hybrids, and hybrids actually
cannot be farm-saved, the law specifically says that cannot be
done, and at the moment the first wave of the technology are hybrid
crops, maize, oilseed rape, sugar beet; so the farm-saved seed
thing does not come up immediately. But we have said in our guidelines
that farmers should not farm-save seed for these crops because
of the issues, obviously identity preservation and knowing and
tracking and tracing them.
19. So just take me through, for the layman's
guide, as to how the seed for GM crops in this context would actually
be produced?
(Dr Turner) It will depend a little bit, but you have
asked a very, very detailed question, I can spend hours talking
about this. Let us pick oilseed rape; oilseed rape will be a hybrid.
Depending on the sort of technology by which that hybrid is produced,
you will have a male and female parent, they will be grown in
a field with particular ratios of male to female to produce the
right level of seed, they will have a cordon around them of another,
non-compatible crop, a barley, or something like that, to give
you a pollen barrier between that crop and the others. The hybrid
seed will be harvested from the female parent only and then that
material will be cleaned, etc., and the whole process, it will
be treated with weed-killers, it will be hand-rogued, and it will
be very, very intensively managed to make sure that the material
leaving that meets the high standards required. As well as that,
the fields are inspected by independent auditors, people who have
to hold certificates, run by the National Institute of Agricultural
Botany.
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