Examination of Witness (Questions 125-139)
PROFESSOR MALCOLM
GRANT
TUESDAY 23 APRIL 2002
Chairman
125. Good morning, Professor Grant. You have
had the somewhat unenviable task of leading the AEBC and attempting
to square circles and bring together an extraordinarily diverse
range of opinion on the issue of genetically modified crops. So
far, the fruit we have seen has been the report Crops on Trial,
which appeared towards the end of last year, and the Government
response to that early this year. One of the key points in the
Government response, prompted by what Crops on Trial said,
was to suggest that you should give advice on how to instigate
a better informed public discussion about the future of genetic
modification in this country. The timescale was given for the
end of this month. Would you give us some indication of what sort
of advice you may be giving?
(Professor Grant) Thank you, Mr Chairman.
We very much welcome the Government's commitment to holding a
wide ranging public debate about the potential commercialisation
of the GM crops as the subject of the current farm-scale evaluations.
The particular initiative comes from our report Crops on Trial
because we believe that there were a number of issues that needed
to be addressed that went beyond the issues that are narrowly
defined in the legislation around the commercialisation of these
crops. We, therefore, proposed to the Government that we would
be willing to assist them in thinking through what a large scale
public debate might look like. Indeed, when she wrote to me in
January, Mrs Beckett accepted that recommendation and asked us
to provide them with advice by the end of this month. Our process
has been along the following lines: we asked our special sub-group
on public attitudes to do the preliminary work on this; and they
have consulted quite widely, including with a number of academics
and practitioners with experience in public engagements and public
dialogue. Their initial draft came to a full Commission meeting
a few weeks ago. Then just last week, on 18 April, we held a special
meeting of the Commission, in public, at which we discussed the
draft which had come through from the sub-group; and, subject
to a number of relatively minor amendments which we hope we can
agree by circulation, we are on track to let the Secretary of
State have the full advice by the end of the month—we hope
to publish it on Monday.
126. What role do you think the Government should
play in this debate, bearing in mind that right at the start of
this process the Government were portrayed as enthusiastic supporters
of biotechnology in crops? Do you feel that they have a particular
role, or should be objective and allow others to conduct this
debate?
(Professor Grant) The Government, I think, finds itself
in something of a dilemma. It needs a public debate, and has acknowledged
that it needs a public debate; but it suffers from potentially
an image that has raised, in the minds of some of those engaged
in the discussions—the stakeholders, an opinion that the
Government is not neutral, for the reason that you mentioned.
Our take on that might be more to the effect that the Government
is finding it difficult to speak with one voice; there are divergent
interests within Government around the whole issue of GM; and
they find expression, of course, around the more particular question
of the potential commercialisation of GM crops. I think it is
important, therefore, for the debate to be conducted in as independent
a manner as possible. Independence will divorce it from the suspicion
of Government interference and intervention, both in framing the
questions for the debate and the processes through which the debate
is undertaken. The advice that we shall be bringing to Government
will be very clear: it will propose that the debate should be
at a mechanical level entrusted to a firm, an organisation, to
be selected by tender, who have experience of public engagement,
consensus, conferences, focus groups—this whole range of
extremely important activity that bolts on a variety of public
opinion to the bare framework of democracy. Secondly, we are proposing
that the work of the debate should be steered by a special steering
board. That steering board, we guess, would have three main constituencies
of members: the first would be representation from the AEBC itself;
that saves the Government having to invent a further independent
advisory body—it has 20 independent experts already sitting
around the table who have found a modus operandi. The second
constituency would, we think, need to be Government officials
because of the questions around proprietary for the financial
running of the programme. We are expecting that the Government
will finance the public debate, and it needs, therefore, to have
proper accountability for the use of public funds. The third constituency
would be a co-opted constituency. We anticipate it would be valuable
for the steering board to be able to bring on to it one or two
people who have themselves expertise in the area of public discourse
and public engagement, so we would like to do that. I would like
to stress though that the view of the AEBC is that independence
needs to be maintained in relation to the key substantive processes
of public debate: in other words, around the way in which the
issues are framed; around the commissioning of a film which is
part of our proposals; and around the evaluation of the material
that comes back to us as a result of the public debate. We would
not anticipate that officials would be engaged in that activity;
and we would wish to secure a guarantee of the independence of
the actors who were involved in it.
127. You have been very generous in giving us
some substantial insights into what you are going to tell the
Secretary of State. We would certainly appreciate that.
(Professor Grant) Chairman, may I perhaps develop
that further. What we have done as a Commission has been to develop
a working process that is entirely open. The thinking behind the
public debate has, as it has emerged, been posted on our website.
Every one of our meetings at which we have discussed it has been
held in public. I am delighted to be able to impart some of this
information to you today. But it is publicly available, and that
is part of the important principle that the Commission has committed
itself to. We felt we were not going to get anywhere in this highly
polarised area unless we were as open and as committed to public
deliberations as we could be.
128. Do you feel, bearing in mind the context
of two years ago in which there were some extremely ill-informed
and, some would say, hysterical views taken of the science and
its application, that the context of that debate is now more favourable;
and we are more likely to see an informed debate in which people
can participate without necessarily being characterised unfairly?
(Professor Grant) I think we would characterise the
debate as being one which needs to be very carefully managed.
We know that this will not be the only show in town. If there
is a public debate, there will be a great deal of media interest.
Those members of the Committee who have seen some of the studies
of media coverage around GM issues—I think particularly
of the POST report in May 2000—will realise that the press
rather divided itself into the reporting press and the campaigning
press. I would not imagine that we could conduct a public debate
without that occurring once again. However, we are very keen to
reach beyond that, and the point of a public debate, through the
mechanisms I have just described to you, has to be reaching beyond
that to members of the public; not to seek a referendum, not to
seek a simple yes/no answer to the question of whether these crops
should be commercialised, but to evaluate the feedback and to
understand what it is about public concerns that lead to the press
coverage that you have mentioned, Mr Chairman, but which are undoubtedly
much more subtle than is frequently portrayed in simplistic campaign
and press coverage.
Mr Jack
129. I am interested in this term "public
debate"; because the public who, for example, bought a GM
product in the form of tomato paste from Sainsburys seemed to
have very little part in a public debate surrounding its removal.
We then had lots of people who had strong, powerful vested interests
discussing in public the whole question of issues surrounding
crop trials and associated GM matters. Given that already positions
have become so polarised, do you actually think you can in some
way engage the wider public in the process you have described,
in such a way that their views can, if you like, rise up to influence
the decision makers? One of the real problems that we find, not
just in this Inquiry but in much of the work we do, is how do
we deal with the very big issue of public confidence in what scientists
say; because they are the keepers of the message of reassurance;
but, in many cases, the people who appear before this Committee
to substantiate their own position have in many cases prayed in
aid their "selective" science. Therefore, it is quite
difficult to work out what the real science is, which must lie
at the heart of the so-called public debate.
(Professor Grant) I think the question at the core
was to do with whether public debate can help to come through
the polarisation. We believe that it can. If we did not believe
that then we would not be proposing it. We believe that there
is an unfortunate polarisation and, as you suggested, that public
confidence has been dented. It has been dented by a number of
events, and I need not recite them this morning—I think
we are all well aware of what they have been. There is, we believe,
no point in the Government moving to introduce on a wide scale
basis commercial growing of GM crops against public confidence.
If there is a lack of public confidence in the outcomes then it
is unlikely that this will be an easy operation for the Government
to achieve. Where does the public debate fit into this? In our
view, its purpose is to, first of all, allow for the public themselves,
through a series of regional focus groups, to think about the
issues, to be advised and informed on the issues, and to come
through with some understanding of what sort of questions they
would wish the public debate to be around. That is a starting
point which is terribly important. Going back to the Chairman's
earlier question about independence—our view is that were
the Government to define the objectives and the range and the
parameters of the public debate it would lack that confidence.
We have got to work from the bottom up in trying to understand
what it is that people feel concerns about. How deep are those
concerns? What do they relate to? Do they relate to food safety?
Do they relate to environmental protection? Do they relate, as
has sometimes been put to us, to the multinational control of
the industry, and the way in which it might move towards a monopolistic
or oligopolistic sovereignty over the technology? We want to start
with that. We need to move on to engaging people in debates prompted,
we think, by the production of a broadcast quality film, maybe
of about 30 minutes, which builds on what we have heard from those
earlier regional focus groups; we need to take regional differences
into account, including of course the regional differences that
we will find in the devolved administrations; and we will then
have a series of seminars, conferences and focus groups which
will bring through to an evaluation group a subtlety of opinion
that you will not find in the campaigning newspapers. We believe
that if we can find that we will be able to give to the Government
at the end of the process, not a mini referendum—nobody
wants a voting package which delivers a yes or no vote—we
want to get to the basis of what is causing the polarisation,
and what it is that people need to understand, want to understand,
and how they can express their views from that.
Mr Mitchell
130. Do you not think you are being super academic
and super cautious to the point of being totally lily-livered
on the issue? Is it not your job, and Government's job, to give
a lead on this issue?
(Professor Grant) Chairman, I would like to invite
Mr Mitchell to come to one of the public meetings of the Commission
because lily-livers he will not find.
Chairman
131. You would need to add a good hour to the
schedule!
(Professor Grant) When I came to this Committee in
May 2000 I am not sure I did not get the same sort of question
then in advance.
Mr Jack: He has only got one!
Mr Mitchell
132. It makes a change from the beginning of
the 19th Century—power looms are coming in and you advocate
the setting up of a combined committee of Luddites, government
and mill owners to decide what to do about it! It will be a kind
of genetically modified machines commission!
(Professor Grant) I will not volunteer for service
on that one! What I would like to do is bring you back to where
we are. Where we are, as we as a Commission see it, is in the
middle of a highly polarised debate. Look at the devolved administrations—the
National Assembly for Wales against any GM growth in Wales has
used the Article 16 procedure under the Directive to take safeguarding
precautions around separation distances. The Transport and Environment
Committee of the Scottish Parliament has just voted 5:4 to stop
the present trial that is occurring in Munlochy in the Black Isle.
That is the degree of polarisation we have got. If Members of
Parliament believe you could soar ahead into a commercial planting
of GM crops against that sort of public unrest and unease without
taking seriously public opinion, I think that would be a fundamental
error. Our Commission has been struggling with that over the last
18 months. It is not a bunch of academic, lily-livered individuals.
It is actually a bunch of rather disturbingly intelligent and
articulate individuals who, in this report Crops on Trial,
I think have delivered to the country something of value.
133. Just like this Committee. You are in that
position because Government itself has not fulfilled its responsibility
to give a lead. The more you get politicians involved the more
likely they are to be panicked by the kind of prejudices and arguments
about Frankenstein food by the manipulation of fear, and not to
look at the scientific argument, and you are really for it or
agin it. Government has blown hot and cold. It came in saying,
"New technology, marvellous for Britain; must be in there".
Then it began to get cautious, and now it does not know what it
thinks, according to what you say. Should not the Government give
a lead?
(Professor Grant) Government should give a lead, but
it should give an intelligent lead. It of course cannot turn its
back on public opinion, that is how governments become governments.
The lead which they must give, I would have thought, could be
much more intelligently conceived were it upon the back of the
sort of public debate we are proposing to the Government. Should
it decide to proceed without that degree of caution, then it may
well find itself becoming deeply unpopular amongst an influential
portion of the public. I think this is the dilemma the Government
finds itself in. It is represented not only in the terms I have
just put to you, it is a dilemma which you will find governments
across Europe in. If you take, for example, what has been happening
since 1998 in the European Commission on applications for Part
C consent (that is commercialisation consent for the deliberate
release of GMOs) there is a moratorium—it is not a formal
moratorium, it is a moratorium which has come about as a result
of an unwillingness of Member States to agree to Part C consents.
It is going to be extremely difficult for the UK Government alone
to proceed with a Part C consent for the two crops in the present
trials that require Part C consent still against that inertia
and moratorium that is occurring in Europe. Caution, I would counsel
this Committee, is still important as we proceed in the public
understanding and testing of public acceptability of GMOs.
134. I notice you say that "an important
effect of the agreement between the Government and the industry
to carry out the farm-scale evaluations has been to buy some time
. . .", in other words, you want a delay. What has been done;
how has the conflict over GMOs been reduced while you have been
buying time with the trials?
(Professor Grant) We report on that as a phenomenon.
The effect was to buy some time; indeed, that may have been the
object of those who agreed to the moratorium that accompanied
the announcement of the farm-scale evaluations; but buying time
in itself has been a valuable commodity; it has given more time
for the SCIMAC participants, and also the Soil Association and
other organic interests, to consider their position. As you will
know, both of them are represented at a very senior level on the
AEBC. Secondly, the FSEs themselves are an extremely important
experiment. They may yet yield us data, not only about the differential
impact of the herbicide regime on the GMHT crops, but also on
the baseline. One of the things we are urging the Government to
look at very carefully is the environmental footprint of different
agronomic practices. It may be that GMHT crops are more environmentally
beneficial or less environmentally beneficial; we do not know
that, and we may not know that even following the outcome of the
FSEs because of their narrow focus; but at least we shall have
started our thinking along the right lines. What is the basis
upon which we should move to adopt a new technology? Is it a blind
acceptance, because we think the science is good; or should we
be looking at it alongside other types of agronomic practice,
and the use of pesticides is a good example, to see whether there
are benefits or disbenefits? That is the question we feel that
the additional time has allowed us to investigate more fully.
135. Having used the fear, the field trial results
are in and evaluated because, as far as I can see, the argument
is not central—it is an environmental argument and that
will be evaluated by the field trials, right and good, but it
is basically a manipulation of the fear about Frankenstein food
which will not be evaluated by the field trials, will it?
(Professor Grant) No, it will not. The field trials
are quite narrow in their focus. It is one of the critical recommendations
in Crops on Trial that they are not the final bit of the
jigsaw. There are much more complex questions to be asked. The
Government is ultimately going to have to take decisions under
Directive 2001/18. It is going to have to take decisions under
plant varieties listing legislation; it is going to have to take
decisions under the EU Regulations on novel foods. There is a
wide variety of intersecting and interlocking regulatory choices
that lie ahead of it. The farm-scale evaluations help in that,
but they are not the final piece of the jigsaw.
Mr Jack
136. In terms of the debate you describe, are
there any precedents you can put before the Committee to persuade
us that the methodology you have described can deliver the kind
of balanced debate where the public and others can have a proper
discussion about these matters?
(Professor Grant) I think it is difficult to point
to a direct precedent for what we are trying to do. There has,
however, been a great deal of development in the UK in use of
consensus conferences, and other forms of engagement of public
opinion. There has also been quite a lot of experience in other
European countries, in Denmark and the Netherlands; and we have
been drawing on that, and our thinking around the design of the
debate has been very much determined by some fundamental questions
of why we are having a debate; who do we want to engage in it;
what is the best way of stimulating and sparking off an intelligent
discussion; and what is the best way of reporting back to the
Government? One of the things that we have added right at the
end of these processes is an evaluation not just of the substantive
feedback but of the process. What can we learn from this? This
is not the only polarised debate in town. The Government is finding
a number of other areas where there is polarisation. Is there
a method that we can use which would assist in future decision-making
in other forums, as well as in relation to GM crops?
Mr Curry
137. Most of political life is polarised. There
has been polarisation in my constituency about how to deal with
foot and mouth disease, but somebody had to make a decision. We
can spend our lives eternally worrying about polarisation and
trying to provide mechanisms by which we simply prove we are polarised.
Can I take you back to the jigsaw. When you said that farm-scale
evaluations were not the final piece of the jigsaw, when we embarked
upon farm-scale evaluations many people thought that this was
what demonstrated whether these products were safe (whatever we
mean by that) for commercial planting. Now we get everybody suddenly
bolting into this wonderful public debate we are going to have,
and I am not quite clear what, at the end of the day, is going
to be demonstrated by it—rather like identifying where we
should bury nuclear waste, which we have investigated already.
Could you tell me quite clearly what the other pieces of the jigsaw
are? Could you spell out a pathway to the approval of these products
for commercial planting? Let us alter our metaphor to stepping
stones. Could you get me from one bank of the stream to the other
bank of the stream and spell out what the stones are on the way
and the time frame in which you think you might get there, without
getting our feet wet?
(Professor Grant) We are clear that the data that
will come from the farm-scale evaluations should not be regarded
as the final piece of the jigsaw. They are trials which are relatively
narrowly focussed in their perspective. That is not at all to
understate their importance. The question is quite narrowly defined;
it is to do with the impact of different herbicide treatment and
management regimes in relation to GMHT crops against a controlled
non-GMHT crop in each case. That will help us to understand the
impact on farmland biodiversity. It is too early, of course, to
forecast what the outcome will be from those trials; and the data
that have so far been collected have been kept entirely confidential,
as is appropriate. We might find that there were quite a number
of variables which were not uniform. For example, there might
be a beneficial effect on some species of wildlife early in the
season but not later in the season or vice-versa. We expect probably
quite a variation in outcome, and not a clear yes or no answer
that GMHT crops are better or worse for the environment. That
is an important first reason for qualifying dependence on the
use of the farm-scale evaluations. I think the other reasons are
somewhat more difficult to encapsulate. The scientific criteria
we find in Directive 2001/18 are to do with human health and the
environment. The farm-scale evaluations will help us with some
of the questions around the environmental side of that, but the
technical questions around both of those issues are for ACRE,
the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment, to advise
the Government on. So far, their advice has been that there is
no unacceptable risk to the environment in the conduct of the
trials. However, the Government, whilst operating within EU legislation,
is obliged to take into account a number of other issues. It must
look not only at the immediate impact, but must look at the medium-term
and long-term impacts. The Directive itself talks about social
and ethical issues. The Government is clear that those are also
relevant, if not to the immediate question of this process of
regulation then perhaps to the question of the future negotiation
of the Directive, should other Member States share its concerns.
The Directive, for example, has provisions in it relating to the
setting up of an ethical committee to advise the European Commission
and, through it, Member States. There are public concerns that
do not slot neatly into a scientific framework, and that comes
back to Mr Mitchell's question: what is the political risk? It
is a political risk which was at the beginning of Mr Curry's question.
Issues about moving to a new technology, which a number of people
have represented to us, seems a watershed. Within our report Crops
on Trial we have set out very clearly the divergent views.
View one is that GM crops are nothing more than a linear step
along the 10,000/12,000 years of crop development. Version two
is that we are at the dawn of a new era in biotechnology. This
is the watershed. These will be the crops that will be hugely
influential on whether other crops are eventually commercialised
in the UK and in Europe. It is those sorts of issues, and the
public's concern about those broader issues, that we are desperate
that the debate we are proposing should be exploring, investigating
and reporting. That has not happened yet.
138. Why do you think in issues like human embryology—and
those questions which touch on the ethics of human reproduction,
and man's ability to reproduce man—that we have decided
setting up committees of the great, the good, the wise and the
scientific which are good enough for the job but nobody is talking
about a vast public debate about this?
(Professor Grant) I disagree. The Human Genetics Commission,
which has responsibility for exactly those sorts of ethical issues
around developments in human genetics, is engaged in very similar
sorts of discussions to those with which we are engaged.
Mr Curry: There is not a single member of my
constituency who is engaged in that debate. I do not think anybody
is engaged in this debate.
Mr Breed
139. Turning now to farm-scale evaluations and
your Crops on Trial report which recommends they continue
against certain conditions, one condition that many people are
extremely concerned about relates to the "buffer zones",
and there has been wide disparity in terms of what that distance
should be. In your view, as they currently are, do you believe
the buffer zones set out in SCIMAC's code of practice are adequate
to prevent any contamination of organic crops?
(Professor Grant) I think there are two or three points
that need to be made about the buffer zones, or separation distances.
The first is that they are not purely technical measures. They
have a political element to them as well; and that political element
hinges around the question of how safe is safe, and what level
of risk are people willing to accept. The separation distances
that appear in the SCIMAC agreement are to do with preserving
a certain threshold for contamination. So there is, of course,
a political and technical issue around what that threshold should
be. What we have done is propose to the Government, and the Government
has accepted it, that the remainder of the trials should be conducted
on a basis which will observe separation distances such as to
ensure that there should be no decertification of any organic
farmer as a result of cross-pollination from GM crops. However,
we have not recommended the SCIMAC separation distances for adoption
in a decision around full commercialisation; that is an issue
which needs further reflection and further debate.
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