Examination of witnesses (Questions 68
- 79)
TUESDAY 18 JULY 2000
BARONESS HAYMAN,
MS SARAH
HENDRY, THE
RT HON
MICHAEL MEACHER
and DR LINDA
SMITH
Chairman
68. Welcome for yet another performance before
us. You are becoming a duo which almost ranks with some of the
more famous television duos.
(Baroness Hayman) I have never been with him before.
69. I am talking about MAFF and DETR. We look
forward to the chemistry between this particular set in relation
to the chemistry between any previous set. You know we did our
general report into some aspects of GM. Since then, we have obviously
had the incidence of the problem with rapeseed. Mr Meacher has
made comments about the impossibility of having an absolutely
pure product. We have had very recently, in the last few days,
the trashing of the field in the south west. Events have moved
on and we want to get up to date, which is the reason for this
hearing. We have just had an hour with Advanta and I think it
is fair to say that the main thrust of what they said was, "We
all know there is a problem here. We have got to have some sort
of regulation which lays down a tolerance for even accidental
levels of contamination, for want of a better word, in GM free
crops. We, at Advanta, have been asking for regulations; we have
asked Brussels for regulations; we have asked MAFF for regulations.
We are now a couple of weeks from one crop being lifted and another
one going into the ground and nothing is happening." Can
you tell us what is happening?
(Baroness Hayman) Perhaps I could talk about the European
action. As you know, this particular event regarding oilseed rape
was not an exclusively United Kingdom event. It happened in Germany,
France and Sweden as well. One of the first things that we did
was to try and put this onto the agenda within Europe because
it is obviously an issue where there is European legislation and
regulation and equally where we need to negotiate with the rest
of the world where the majority of GM production takes place,
so there have to be OECD considerations as well. There have been
several meetings of the Standing Committee on Seeds since then.
That Committee has now come up with interim proposals about a
framework that would be voluntarily adopted throughout the Community,
which would include exchange of information between Member States,
which I think is very important, which would set some initial
tolerances for GM constructs that had Part C marketing consents—and
that is the only proposal—but would set a zero limit for
anything that did not have a Part C consent. Those proposals are
out for consultation between Member States at the moment with
a view to publication, I understand, next week. David Byrne is
coming to this country on Thursday and wants to meet MAFF ministers
to discuss that. I hope to be able to do so then. I hope that
we might have an interim framework in place for this year's planting
season, but obviously we do need comprehensive legislation. That
will have to be quite complex. We found this when we were setting
tolerances around food. The tolerance levels in food for something
not needing to be labelled as GM may well need to be different
to tolerances for seeds. It may well be different for something
that is labelled GM free, rather than something that has to be
labelled as GM. That is another parallel issue. I think there
is work going on and there is certainly work that was foreshadowed
in the European White Paper on Food Safety, which did mention
work that the Commission needed to do in this area.
70. I am struck by the contrast in public reception
to all the announcements relating to the genome on one side and
the whole GM issue on the other. Do you get a sense that, unless
a mechanism can be put in place whereby people feel they own,
to use an old fashioned phrase which is consensually based, but
this whole thing is spinning so out of control that it is going
to be very difficult to find a method of making it possible for
GM crops to be grown in the United Kingdom or to tackle the sort
of issue which we have identified with the Advanta incident.
(Baroness Hayman) My personal view is that there is
a dichotomy in public opinion between the potential benefits that
are seen in what is happening in the human genome project and
the applicability to human health and indeed to animal health,
and that which is seen in relationship to crops and food. Genetics
is a branch of science like anything else. In my own view, it
is neutral. It is neither good nor bad, any more than chemistry
or physics, and it can be applied productively or for results
that are unsatisfactory and unwanted. I also think that there
have not been things that have come out of crop production in
Europe that have been attractive to Europeans to make them want
to support this particular technology as against taking a very
precautionary approach. When you look at potential applications,
not of herbicide tolerant maize or oilseed rape, but at vitamin
A enriched rice, at crops that could grow in areas that in the
past have been contaminated with saline, then you see the potential
applications for agriculture.
71. Advanta told us that it appeared that the
contamination came from the presence of GM crops but at a distance
of over four kilometres, because they were applying separation
distances of four kilometres, which was eight times the requirement
or rule in Canada. I know that the government's response to this
particular problem was to say, "The obvious first thing we
have to look at is always the separation distances." Have
you yet drawn any conclusions about this?
(Baroness Hayman) We launched the review and asked
for opinions on separation distances. Submissions have been concluded.
We have not yet drawn conclusions from it. Nor has it received
evidence from the Canadian authorities about the experience within
Canada. They are still undertaking investigations, so we do not
have conclusions from the Canadian authorities about the genesis
of this particular event.
72. You accept—I am looking at Mr Meacher
now in relation to the comment he made in the House some time
ago—that even when all this is done and dusted you will
have to accept the possibility that, in seeds designated as GM
free, there may be some element of pollution for the reasons which
have been outlined?
(Mr Meacher) Yes. That is perfectly clear. There is
in the messy world of agriculture no absolute dividing line. In
an absolute, extreme case, for those people who would like the
whole of the United Kingdom to be GM free, it is not impossible—
73. Like the Falkland Islands?
(Mr Meacher) It is not impossible that seed in very
unusual conditions could be blown across from the continent. There
is no absolute dividing line. We have to have a sensible rule.
I have to say—and this has been said over and over again—that
these traditional isolation margins do take account of a very
long period of agricultural practice. They have been tested repeatedly
and something of the order of 99.5 per cent does not get beyond
those traditional distances. If you extend those further, you
will certainly reduce those but we are talking in some cases about
vanishingly small amounts of pollution.
Mr Todd
74. Although the evidence in this particular
case is that compliance with the voluntary SCIMAC rules produced
an outcome which was a position of one per cent roughly contamination,
these were well in excess of the separation distances that were
endorsed, thus far voluntarily, in this country. It implies that
those rules are really insufficient to meet the concerns that
people have here for a reasonable level of assurance of purity.
(Mr Meacher) First of all, as Helene Hayman has said,
the actual cause of the contamination is still not established.
The Canadian government has still not reached a conclusive view
that it was as a result of cross-pollination. The evidence, I
understand, may point in that direction but it is not conclusive.
75. Certainly the evidence we heard prior to
your coming in from Advanta was that that appeared to be very
firmly their view.
(Mr Meacher) I cannot speak about the Canadian situation.
No doubt we shall get a final view given to us by the Canadian
government. Yes, of course we do have to take that into account
and that, amongst other evidence, is precisely the reason why
we are undertaking this review, which will report by 1 August.
We will have to take account of it with regard to the autumn plantings
where we can, although we may be only able, if any changes are
to be made, to make provisional changes at this stage.
76. Can I ask you what the strategy behind this
review is? What are we seeking to achieve?
(Mr Meacher) We have a joint answer. Would you wish
to give it?
(Baroness Hayman) What I would like to achieve is
a testing of the basis on which separation distances have been
laid down for the farm scale evaluations in the past, where the
Advisory Committee on Releases into the Environment has recognised
always the possibility of pollen flow, for example, and has assessed
that for environmental risk before approving the trials. Obviously,
what those assessments have been has to be tested against whether
there is any new evidence that people want to put forward about
cross-pollination. Equally, we have to look at the issues about
seed production. There are all sorts of other elements of pollen
transfer. It could be cross-pollination with wild plants or whatever.
What I would like to get out of the review is a sense of the separation
distances that are necessary for different levels of purity because
the separation distance is not something in itself; it is a means
for achieving purity standards. It does become important therefore
that we have some decisions about what purity standards are. For
me, the major lesson that came out of this was that the purity
standards that we had for "contamination" by conventional
seed that was not the seed that was being marketed—another
variety of Hyola oilseed rape, for example—were very broad,
set down over many years. We have production levels, systems that
allow that to happen, but they do not take specific account of
GM and people want a lower tolerance level—this is my instinct—for
GM adventitious presence than they do for non-GM adventitious
presence, but we have to consider that and how you put that into
the framework. That was one of the difficulties of dealing with
this particular incident.
(Mr Meacher) There is a functional relationship between
distance and degree of purity or impurity. I think I have already
said this publicly: my view is that that could only be determined
by what consumers are prepared to accept. Once we have a clear
idea of what degree of contamination they are prepared to accept
in a product and still call it non-GM, then one can work backwards
to the distances that will actually produce that result.
77. I prefer the latter answer, if I may, which
starts from the point of view of who the stake holders in this
particular review are. If we are to persuade people in this country
of the acceptance of any level of this technology, we have to
start from their perceptions rather than from the supply chain's
perceptions, the farmers' perceptions, the scientists' perceptions
and so on. I am reassured to some extent by what Michael has said.
Can I ask what the role of the AEBC will be, which has the challenging
task of encompassing a wide variety of views on this subject?
What role will they have in this strategy?
(Mr Meacher) That was set up as a body precisely to
deal with this kind of situation.
78. That is why I asked the question.
(Mr Meacher) We have not, I think everyone would agree,
had a very balanced or very comprehensive debate about what is
a very complex and difficult subject. We wanted a body which first
of all would draw in the whole range of the stakeholders, whose
authority and competence would be respected by the public and
who could seek to lead that public debate in a better manner on
precisely this sort of issue. This is the kind of issue that we
would refer to them; they would take soundings and hopefully they
would produce their opinion. They would publish it and that would
spark a more balanced debate. That is exactly what we wanted them
for.
79. Do you expect therefore that this body should
have the opportunity to pronounce on this matter before you actually
publish the proposals on separation distances as a government?
(Mr Meacher) It would be very desirable to do so but
I take it the point of your question is that will not be before
1 August, and I think that is perfectly true. We are under conflicting
pressures here. We have the winter rape plantings which have to
take place before the end of August and we are being pressed to
reach conclusions which could be applied to these plantings; and
at the same time I agree with you, having set up a body for that
purpose, it would be much better if we were, at a more leisurely
pace, able to consult them and for them to undertake their consultations,
but in the short term pressures that we are under that, on this
occasion, will not be possible, although I am sure that we are
going to look to them still to comment.
(Baroness Hayman) AEBC was set up not because there
was a feeling that the regulatory bodies dealing with the technicalities
of these issues, like ACRE, were incapable of so doing. I would
not imagine that AEBC would be looking at specific differential
distances for separation between different sorts of crops. They
were to look at some of the broader issues that you were talking
about around public acceptability, ethics of involving the technology
and—
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