Examination of witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
TUESDAY 18 JULY 2000
DR DAVID
BUCKERIDGE and MR
MIKE RUTHVEN
Chairman
1. Gentlemen, welcome to the Committee. You
will know that we have done an inquiry into some of the technical
issues involved in GM foods which was published some months ago.
In the light of more recent developments—and, of course,
there has been one since, which is the trashing of the crop down
in the South West—we wanted to come up to date, and clearly,
as you have been in the eye of the storm, we thought it would
make sense to have you along to talk to us. I am going to ask
you a couple of questions to begin with. For the purposes of the
record, would you identify who you are and your position in the
company as a preliminary. My first question is: do I deduce from
your evidence that you are contemplating legal action against
the Ministry of Agriculture? You had contemplated a scheme of
buying and exporting the crop. The Minister then gave it as his
opinion that it should be ploughed in, and that gave you no alternative
but to follow that line and to compensate. Just for clarification,
are you contemplating a legal case against the Department?
(Dr Buckeridge) I am David Buckeridge. I am a director
of Advanta Seeds. In response to that question, our whole focus
at the moment, Mr Chairman, is to look after the farmers who have
inadvertently planted this crop, and to work on the compensation
packages that we have proposed and have been supported by the
farmers' unions. We have not contemplated any further legal steps
at this point in the proceedings.
2. Have you ruled them out, or does that remain
a possibility?
(Dr Buckeridge) We have not ruled them out at this
stage.
3. Could I refer you to your very helpful and
quite forthright submission? You give the history of how the contamination
occurred, and in paragraph 2.1 you say: "At a minimum, thresholds
for accidental GM impurity need to be set, standard testing methods
need to be stipulated and results should be analysed by an approved
and consistent statistical method." Could you explain? Your
argument seems to be that we are going to get contamination. I
am using the word "contamination" because I cannot think
of a better word. We are into a world where, because GM is so
heavily planted, this is going to happen. You are a conventional
seed company, but you have got to deal with this. Have I summarised
it correctly? Would you like to tell me how you perceive the problem?
(Dr Buckeridge) I think you have summed it up very
well. We know as a conventional seed company—and we have
experience of producing seed for a number of years; the company
is over 100 years old—never in the production of seed has
any seed company ever striven for 100 per cent purity. All seed
production methodologies strive to keep impurities of any type
to a minimum level. There are strong regulations around things
like weed seed impurities, impurities from other varieties which
are entering the crop through the natural course of cross-pollination,
which occurs in the open environment where the seeds have to be
produced. It is our belief that, with the level of GM plantings
on a global basis, and bearing in mind that the seed industry
is a global industry, seed companies can adhere to all the regulations
which are in place, follow all the purity guidelines, as was the
case in this particular incident with the rape, and still find
themselves in a situation where, accidentally, very low levels
of GM impurities may occur. For all sorts of reasons, for the
operation of our business, for farmers' confidence and for public
confidence, it is important that there are regulations in place
which state what the threshold for that impurity should be, just
like we state for all the other seed impurities; that tell companies
what method should be used to analyse for impurities, because
there are some questions of reliability in the methods; and further,
make sure that those impurity tests are subjected to a valid statistical
analysis. We do not believe it is any good to come along with
one test result for a large batch of seed and say, "This
seed is GM-free" because we believe that the testing should
be done on a sampling basis and should be statistically valid
if people are to have confidence in the results. We believe that
should be a matter of regulation, and we believe the need for
that regulation is very urgent.
4. You say, "This incident is proof positive
that despite strenuous efforts to maximise seed purity and despite
full compliance with seed purity regulations, seed can enter the
UK market with trace levels of impurity." You also say, "Trace
levels of GM impurities will occur now that various parts of the
world have accepted the value and safety of GMOs. This is universally
recognised . . ." Are you sure it is universally recognised?
(Dr Buckeridge) I think that recognition is restricted
to the seed industry. I think it is recognised in the seed industry
that this is the case. Farmers understand that cross-pollination
occurs as a natural phenomenon. Seed crops for production rely
on efficient cross-pollination. It has to occur. What the seed
company is trying to do is to make sure that cross-pollination
is only occurring with pollen which is intended to cross-pollinate.
But I think the seed industry universally understands that there
will always be trace levels of impurities which will accidentally
cross-pollinate, as was the case with this rape seed.
(Mr Ruthven) Could I add to that, Chairman? Michael
Ruthven, General Manager of Advanta Seed UK and a director. This
is recognised universally, the word we have used, in the existing
seed regulations, because they do not call for 100 per cent purity,
either genetically or mechanically.
5. In 4.1 you state, "From our perspective,
the incident also serves to demonstrate that communication of
the facts, allowing individuals to make informed decisions, is
virtually impossible in our society today. This is especially
true where the subject matter is highly technical." We have
just had a lot of excitement about the genome. I do not get the
impression that it has been impossible to have a sensible debate
on the genome. What is special about your sector which makes it
so difficult that you should feel obliged to issue this cry of
anguish?
(Dr Buckeridge) Our frustration, Mr Chairman, has
been that there were, we believe, important facts about this case
that became very difficult to communicate because of the intense
media interest which was generated. It is fair to say that when
journalists are putting together stories, they need to cut to
the chase very quickly to get the facts over through the method
of communication they are using, and that is not conducive to
explaining all sorts of technical arguments which came out, like
the accuracy of the testing, why the testing is unreliable; like
the issue of whether the crop was contaminated from mechanical
mixing in a factory or whether it was to do with cross-pollination.
Those to us were very important facts, but it seemed very difficult
to communicate those as a company, and even more difficult for
us to communicate with the farmers who were inadvertently affected
by this to get clear information to them.
6. You say, "Advanta believes that a lack
of understanding of the basics of agriculture existed in some
quarters of the Ministry . . ." Which quarters do you have
in mind?
(Dr Buckeridge) On the specifics, we were surprised
at the questions we received on issues like whether the crop was
sterile. We were asked for technical follow-up on those issues.
We had no problem with providing that, and we did provide it,
but it just seemed to us that through the course of events we
felt we had given a thorough briefing and that briefing did not
always come through in the statements which the Ministry was making.
To be fair, everybody was operating in uncharted water on this
issue. We have made those comments. We were a little concerned
about the technical understanding of some of the issues which
we felt were germane to the particular incident that was in hand.
But we also concede that we were in uncharted water; it was a
unique experience, as far as we know.
7. The whole thrust of your report is to say,
"We have to have a regulatory framework. We have been demanding
it, and we must have it. People have been dilatory. We shall have
harvested one crop and are about to plant another, and still nothing
has happened." Yet in paragraph 4.3 you say, "We doubt
whether it will be possible to frame sensible and practical legislation
in the wake of this event and strongly suspect that this will
lead to a withdrawal of certain products from the UK market .
. . yet another blow to the competitiveness of UK agriculture."
Either you do want regulation or you do not, and if you do want
regulation, why do you say we will not be able to have sensible
and practical legislation?
(Dr Buckeridge) We certainly do want urgent regulation.
Our observation is looking at the types of discussion that have
been going on on things like thresholds, and those discussions
do not appear to be rooted in the facts of the matter. They appear
to be rooted in an emotional drive to get to a lower and lower
threshold, but without necessarily a technical justification to
say why one per cent is better than five per cent, for example.
There has been a lot of debate about what thresholds should be,
as you know from your investigations into food as well. With this
incident, at a very early stage there was a very clear communication
from the Ministry to us to say, "We do not perceive a threat
to the environment and we do not perceive a threat to health."
In that situation, if we are looking at thresholds, we are trying
to do those for the protection of people with concerns about this
technology. We would like to see thresholds set at sensible levels
that can be measured, but we would like them to be set in an unemotional
way and a factual way, and we feel that the debate is going down
more of an emotional concern about the lowest level one can get
to.
Mr Jack
8. You have mentioned, Dr Buckeridge, your understanding
of the sensitivity of this issue. You have talked about purity,
you have talked about testing. Why did it take a German laboratory
to tell you that there was a problem? Did you not test on a random
basis for your own peace of mind the seed that was produced to
check if this problem could occur?
(Dr Buckeridge) The reason we adopted the approach
we took was that our Canadian business which produced the seed
was aware that there was a sensitivity around GMs in Europe. There
were discussions about that, and the strategy it chose to adopt
was to use extremely wide separation distances to avoid the risk
of cross-pollination. In Canada the regulations stipulate that
an 800 metre separation distance should be used for a seed crop.
In the case of this crop, it was grown with a 4 km separation
distance, so five times the regulatory standard. The reason it
went for separation distance as its mode of minimising risk rather
than tests was because it was concerned about the reliability
of the available tests, particularly in a brassica crop. One of
the concerns which had been widely expressed, not just by us but
by scientists in general, is that the testing methodology for
DNA testing is prone to give false positive results, because it
is possible that it will detect contaminants that are not from
the seed at all, just dust and other matter.
9. There are two tests, are there not? In your
evidence you talk about the PCR method, but you also talk about
another method. Could you not use both?
(Dr Buckeridge) We decided at that point in time that
the best testing method that was available to us to achieve good
purity was very wide separation distances. That was the decision
that the business made at that point.
10. In spite of the fact that you knew that
the seed would be tested at the other end?
(Dr Buckeridge) I am sorry. I do not understand the
question.
11. You know the seed business. You have told
us you have been in it for 100 years. People test what they receive.
You must have known that people would be testing when they bought
your product, yet you leave yourselves wide open to a phone call
from a German laboratory to alert the world to a failure of the
previously described regime.
(Mr Ruthven) Could I just pick you up on one point?
You said that we test. We do not test seed that is coming into
the country. It is already certified as pure in accordance with
the existing seed regulations when it is received.
12. I was more concerned about the seed that
left, given the sensitivity which your evidence quite clearly
established in your mind about this new area of science as applied
to agriculture, and the sensitivities already exhibited in the
market place to which you were exporting. I find it surprising
that nobody bothered to check a sample, irrespective of the regulation,
before it left.
(Dr Buckeridge) We can obviously only report the facts
of what happened, and in 1998, which was when this seed was grown,
it was the judgement of the Canadian business that the separation
distance it had used, which was five times the regulatory standard,
would lead to a situation where no impurities would be present.
It was not a routine part of its Canadian testing programme to
test, and therefore it did not do so on this seed.
13. Let us move on to the timescale of the reaction.
You found out about this on 31 March. On 6 April your evidence
tells us that you decided on a precautionary basis to stop the
sale of these seeds in the United Kingdom, but it took you until
14 April to get in touch with MAFF about this. Why was there such
a long delay? Why did you not pick up the phone straight away
and say, "We've got a problem"? Your evidence says that
when you rang MAFF everything was cloaked in mystery. You requested
a meeting and would not tell MAFF what it was about. Why the cloak
and dagger approach?
(Dr Buckeridge) Yes, we found out about this through
a telephone call from an agent which sells the seed for Advanta
in Germany. It is not a part of Advanta's business. The agent
left us a message to say that a university lab had detected a
GM presence in one of the Hyola varieties. This incident involves
three different varieties. So at that point we knew that there
was a potential issue in one of the varieties. At the same time
as receiving that information the manager in the UK contacted
the Canadian business on that Friday night. The Canadian business
expressed extreme surprise because of the isolation distances
that they had used, and also expressed scepticism about the testing
method that the German university was using. The agent himself
took the initiative early the next week to go to another German
laboratory to try and verify the test, again using this DNA testing,
this PCR method. The Canadian business at that point, because
it was sceptical about the test, early the next week decided that
it would instigate a longer term test, looking at whole plants
to see whether there was this herbicide resistance in those plants.
By the 6th those tests had been initiated. The other practice
that we had to set in train was checking through the seed lots
which had gone to Germany to see whether they had gone to any
other countries. So we were not in possession of information on
the 31st that we had a problem in the UK. We were in possession
of one sample result from a German laboratory with, in our view,
a questionable method. What did we do? We tried to verify that
result as quickly as possible using the same method but with a
different lab, and that was done by our agent in Germany. We instigated
our own tests, the first of which was ordered on 31 March. But
those tests were the type of test which took a longer period.
We did not feel that we could talk to the DETR before the Ministry
of Agriculture with a situation where we did not fully understand
the problem. When we checked the seed batches, it came to our
attention that there were two other varieties that were grown
in close proximity to where the crop with the alleged problem
was sitting. We believed that it was worth checking those batches
at that point. We did not know there was a problem, but there
was enough suspicion to think that there could be. Those were
also put on test runs early the next week, somewhere around 4
or 5 April. It was not until those tests came back, which was
on the evening of the 12th, that we had enough information. We
did not know the level of the impurity but we had enough information
to know that it was a very low level because of the tests we had
done, and we also felt we had enough to go and talk to the Ministry
and say, "We believe there is a genuine issue here."
We talked through our trade association because we could not find
clarity in the law, and we had taken legal advice at this stage,
on the 13th. We were not clear whether this was an issue of environmental
law or whether it was an issue of seed purity. To us there seemed
to be a gap. We took legal advice, we talked to the trade association
to seek their advice, and on the 14th the trade association made
contact with the Ministry to set up a meeting. The Ministry reacted
very quickly and arranged a meeting for the Monday.
14. Was the meeting that took place on the 17th
a satisfactory meeting?
(Dr Buckeridge) Maybe it would be best for Mr Ruthven
to answer that because he was at the meeting.
(Mr Ruthven) The Ministry, as Dr Buckeridge said,
replied extremely promptly. In hindsight we feel we should have
let the officials know what the subject matter was, but we felt
the previous week that a telephone contact mentioning part of
the subject would be unsatisfactory. Perhaps that was not, in
hindsight, the best decision. We met with the Ministry. We made
notes of the meeting immediately at the end of the meeting. I
will just refer to my notes. The main points which came out of
the meeting were as follows. There was agreement between us and
the officials that the PCR tests were not the most reliable and
that the best results could be obtained from what we call bio-assays,
the alternative testing method that Dr Buckeridge just referred
to. The officials believed there was no known threat to the environment
at this stage. If there was going to be a threat, it would emerge
at the flowering stage of the crop. The only guidance available
in the absence of any regulation was the one per cent provision
in the food regulations. We were advised it would be possible
for the UK to form its own regulations and guidelines, and the
officials were going to write to the EU in any event. The officials
needed to obtain legal advice before they could give us any further
advice on this issue. They advised us strongly to stop sales,
which of course had already been done. They needed to consult
Ministers. We stressed in that meeting the urgent need for a response,
because if there was going to be a crop destruction of some sort,
this was an opportunity for us to deal with what could be quite
serious—
15. Did the question of crop destruction emerge
as a proposal in the course of your early discussions?
(Mr Ruthven) That was asked for by us during the course
of the discussions at that meeting.
16. You asked the question or you asked for
the crops to be destroyed?
(Mr Ruthven) We did not ask for them to be destroyed.
What we said was, if it was going to be necessary, which we did
not believe, we would need to know promptly, because that would
give farmers the opportunity to re-sow alternative seed and would
mitigate the cost problems we would possibly face. That was the
reason for the question, and we did ask for an urgent response
if there was going to be any need to destroy the crop. Quite rightly,
the officials said they needed to consult with their Ministers.
We interpreted that meeting as one with no panic. Our feeling
quite strongly from that meeting was that, because we were stating
that the impurity levels were believed to be below one per cent,
there was no cause for real concern. That was the feeling we got
from the officials and was our own feeling from the meeting. We
believed that there was a tacit understanding that it should not
enter the public domain. I know some of these issues have been
reported in the press and elsewhere, but at no time have we been
asked specifically to suppress any information, but we did feel
there was a tacit understanding between us, and as a result of
that understanding, when we got back and I reported to my colleagues,
we stood down the team that we had had standing by, both to communicate
with our customers and if necessary to deal with the media.
17. You mentioned the question of the destruction
of the crop. In your evidence you indicated that you arranged
for a scheme to segregate the crop and harvest it for export.
Were you taken aback when after all the protestations of safety
from MAFF suddenly they hove into view with this proposal that
the crop should be destroyed? What was your opinion of that?
(Mr Ruthven) We went through a process of quite some
time in discussions with the Ministry, and we consistently held
the view as a business that destruction of the crop would be an
over-reaction. We sought with other members of the industry to
find means of dealing with the crop when it came to harvest, and
as late as 25 May the industry was in consultation with Baroness
Hayman. The announcement by Nick Brown on 27 May caught us completely
off guard. It was a Saturday. We had no staff available to deal
with it. We heard about it on the one o'clock news on the radio,
and the first thing we really knew was journalists trying to contact
us. That was a complete surprise to us.
18. What did the Ministry say was the excuse?
That was on the 27th, you said. You were trying to get a meeting
with Baroness Hayman on the 23rd and suddenly it is cancelled.
Did they tell you why?
(Dr Buckeridge) They just said it was to do with diary
pressure.
19. Any idea what this great pressure was?
(Mr Ruthven) No. We immediately wrote to Baroness
Hayman to express the points that we would have hoped to have
raised in the meeting with her.
(Dr Buckeridge) If I can put it in perspective, Mr
Chairman, I think, as we said in the written submission, we were
not saying that the idea of segregating the crop to take it out
of food use would be easy, but we had excellent cooperation from
other members of the food supply chain in trying to achieve that,
so it was something of a surprise when the advice was given on
the 27th. But I do think it is important to put it in perspective
and say we were not proposing some kind of very easy solution
that would just take the problem away. It was going to be complicated.
It was a tiny area of crop involved. It was very geographically
spread around the country. Putting that together in an identity-preserved
way to export it for use in countries where there was not the
same GM sensitivity would not have been an easy task, but that
was the track that we were going down until the 27th. Of course,
after the 27th the enthusiasm for that waned fairly quickly.
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