Examination of Witness (Questions 40-60)
29 OCTOBER 2003
RT HON
MICHAEL MEACHER
MP
Q40 Chairman: Did anyone at any point
say to you, "Oh, by the way, atrazine could be banned at
any minute and the whole thing could go down the chute?"
Mr Meacher: No.
Q41 Chairman: No one ever said that
to you?
Mr Meacher: No.
Q42 Sue Doughty: Were they aware
of that fact, in your opinion?
Mr Meacher: Well, it is difficult
to say unless you specifically ask someone about it. My own belief
is that officials and representatives of the scientific community
and of course members of the industry, who keep a very close eye
on these things, I think probably did know and the very fact,
which I did not know until recently, that atrazine had already
been banned in the Netherlands and Germany and a ban was being
considered in France certainly indicated the way the wind was
moving.
Q43 Sue Doughty: So we are in a situation
where we think they knew, they let it go ahead and just sat on
the information and now we have a trial which really has large
queries about the validity because of the different points you
have made about the percentage of atrazine in the other herbicides?
We have got a problem, therefore, where it is really not at all
valid and yet all this investment has gone into this trial to
produce a result which is extremely, extremely questionable?
Mr Meacher: I think you are correct.
I think there was evidence that atrazine was being "fingered",
could quite likely be banned, was involved in the use of Liberty
or glufosinate and that therefore if you wanted reliable trials
you should exclude it at the start and I do regret that that decision
was not taken.
Q44 Chairman: I think you said earlier
that industry was aware that there were problems with this particular
herbicide. It is quite hard to understand how industry knows more
about whether or not it is going to be banned than Government.
That is the implication of what you are saying?
Mr Meacher: Well, I am saying
that I believe that the interface with the industry, the industry
representatives, SCIMAC are in constant discussion with officials
in Defra. That, I think, is perfectly proper. I think there should
be a continuous flow of information. So it is not one or the other.
I think it was probably known to both. Why a decision was not
made to pull the trials on this basis or to insist that the trials
should go ahead, as I think they should have done, but not using
atrazine, I do not know.
Q45 Sue Doughty: So we have a situation
now where it was not pulled and the Scientific Steering Committee
thinks that the results are sufficiently valid for them to go
ahead. Do you actually think that GM maize is likely to be commercialised
given this situation? Given the fact that the Scientific Steering
Committee does not seem to be as concerned as you certainly are,
and I think as we are, given the context of those trials, do you
think it will go ahead?
Mr Meacher: That of course is
a decision for Government, for which I no longer speak, but I
would be extremely surprised if the industry or indeed if Government
tried to proceed with the commercialisation of GM maize in the
light of the very real questions about the validity of these maize
trials for all the reasons we have been discussing, and secondly
in view of the intense and probably growing degree of public opposition.
Q46 Sue Doughty: So possibly the
decision will be deferred more on the basis of public opposition,
possibly, which may bail them out of the fact that we have got
very dubious science going on here?
Mr Meacher: The fact is that of
course the public's view has been known for a long time and Government
has taken a view, in particular the Prime Minister has taken the
view, that this should be decided on the basis of science. I think
that is a perfectly reasonable view because those who are nearer
to the detailed technical data may have a better understanding
of the facts than many members of the public, who may well misunderstand.
However, I think the degree of opposition in the democracy which
now exists is so great that it cannot be swept on one side. But
the real point about these trials is nothing to do with the public's
attitude, it is to do with the science, and that is why they are
so significant. It is the science which is saying that in the
case of oilseed rape and beet we should not proceed. The Government
said explicitly, I said over and over and over again, that if
these trials showed harm to the environment we would not license
GM crops. They have shown damage to the environment and therefore
logically we will not proceed, that would be my conclusion, with
licensing these particular crops. In the case of maize, as we
have said, it is more complicated although I still think that
the evidence points strongly in the same direction.
Q47 Sue Doughty: Just one final question
and really this is on the farm scale trials as a whole, together
with the other strands of research and investigation of GM crops.
Do you think really they are providing an adequate basis for the
Government to make a decision, leaving aside the public opinion
but on the science, particularly on the other crops? Do you think
it is giving them an adequate basis about the acceptability, at
least in scientific terms, of GM food?
Mr Meacher: My conclusion on that
is that in the case of oilseed rape and beet, for the reasons
I have just given, there is sufficient evidence to reach a decision
and that is a decision that we should not license those GM crops.
In the case of maize, as I have said, it is more complex and either
you reach the conclusion that there is no basis to proceed on
the grounds that if you used a less toxic chemical weedkiller
than atrazine you would very likely get the same results—but
if anyone or the Government wishes to confirm that then the only
way to do that is through further trials. I would also say that
before the Government proceeds to license any GM crops for cultivation
in this country there are three further issues which need to be
settled. One is the health impacts of eating GM food, which has
never been systemically investigated and my view is that having
done environmental trials for the first time in the world and
got some extremely unexpected results it is very reasonable and
desirable to do the same tests over health because we might well
get the same kind of surprises. Secondly, it would be irresponsible
and improper, in my view, to proceed with any cultivation of GM
crops until a framework which guaranteed coexistence and protection
of organic crops is in place and that must also include a statutory
liability provision to protect organic farmers. Thirdly, I think
it would be wrong to proceed with GM crops until there is a basis
on which the consumer—and thousands of them wrote to me
when I was a Minister and said, "We don't want you to commercialise
GM crops but if you insist on doing so at least you must give
us the basis on which we can eat GM-free foods"—and
the current labelling and traceability thresholds now being introduced
in the EU, which are a huge improvement on what went before because
nothing went before in terms of labelling, is a 0.9 threshold.
After all the haggling that goes on it is an absurd threshold
but it is 0.9%. But that does not tell you, if you go into a supermarket
and you see a packet or a jar and it has no label on it, whether
it is GM-free or contains up to a maximum of nearly 1% GM and
until there is a provision which tells you that it is GM-free
I do not think it would be right to introduce GM crops. So I think
those are three further criteria which need to be met, but I do
not even think we are near that point. I think the evidence of
these Farm Scale Evaluation trials is decisive in itself alone.
Sue Doughty: Thank you.
Q48 Mr Thomas: You will be aware
that Chris Pollock, a good Aberystwyth man who is chair of the
Steering Committee, has said that these results are applicable
throughout the EU, that they can be taken from the UK context
and read across the European Union. What effect are you aware
that has had in other European countries, because you earlier
outlined this complicated and convoluted process by which of course
all EU countries have to decide on these matters in order for
one to go ahead?
Mr Meacher: Absolutely. I think
the EU implications are very great because, as all members of
the Committee will know, the EU is currently subject to a case
before the WTO on the grounds that the de facto moratorium
is illegal. What the Farm Scale Evaluation trials show is that
there are legal grounds upon which the cultivation of GM can be
resisted, namely that they do constitute harm to the environment.
Q49 Mr Thomas: Are those legal grounds
just for these crops or legal grounds for a continual moratorium
on all GM crops?
Mr Meacher: No, I am sorry. You
are quite right to make that caveat. I think we do proceed on
the basis of each particular crop but with the exception of wheat,
which Monsanto is extremely keen to introduce GM harm red spring
wheat, particularly in Canada and North America and then of course
through Europe, these are the three main foods. So it is not 100%
of GM crops but these are the main ones. I was only referring
to these three. I do not think we can extrapolate automatically
to other crops. But in respect of these three, I think the EU
has the evidence upon which they could mount a perfectly defensible
and effective resistance to the US claim because Article 16 does
say that a country can refuse cultivation, can refuse an application
to grow a GM crop if it constitutes harm to the environment and
for the first time that evidence is now available.
Q50 Mr Thomas: Just to briefly return
to the UK context and press you a little further on the biodiversity
aspect of this because the Government, you will remember, had
a biodiversity action plan for the UK. Although these Farm Scale
Evaluations noted the biodiversity impact, it does not seem to
have linked in with that action plan or even with some of the
headline sustainable development indicators, for example on songbirds,
which the Government has. Was that something which should have
been done, or more importantly do you think that Defra is doing
that now and taking those implications of these trials on board
in terms of a more general effect on a wider range of Government
policies on sustainable development?
Mr Meacher: I think it would have
been useful if those comparisons had been made, but to be fair
the point of the trials was to look at the differential biodiversity
impact of each half of the field depending on the chemical weedkiller
used, GM and non-GM, and that is all that did need to be done.
Again quoting, there were 4,000 visits made, one million plants
analysed, three-quarters of a million seeds and one and a half
million invertebrates caught in traps and sucking machines. It
is on a pretty substantial scale and it is the sheer range and
depth and I think the integrity of these trials, which I would
praise, which I think makes them so effective. It would have been
useful to have linked it to the biodiversity action plans but
I do not think that is essential.
Q51 Mrs Clark: Obviously you were
the Minister of State for the Environment at the time the trials
were initiated and set up and indeed almost right until the end
of their duration. I would really like to ask if you actually
had such very, very strong reservations about the value of the
trials at the outset. I think today nobody who has heard you speaking
about it would be in any doubt as to what your views are and I
would like to say I think they have been admirably clear, but
I do remember a time earlier on when, for example, you were interviewed
by this Committee along with Dr Jack Cunningham on the topic of
GM and that was fairly early on at the sort of height of the furore
and I do not remember you being quite as forthright and clear
about what the downside was at that time. So what I am going to
ask next is, were you actually constrained when you were Minister
of State for the Environment on this? You were interviewed at
a very, very sensitive time and the Daily Mail was screaming on
every page, as you have referred to earlier on, "Frankenstein
Food, Frankenstein Food," Dr Cunningham was clearly very,
very uncomfortable on that occasion and I am just wondering, did
Alistair Campbell say something like, "Come on, Michael,
this has got to be dampened down. It's damaging the Government
day after day after day. Hold the line"?
Mr Meacher: I am very glad to
tell the Committee that Alistair Campbell did not say any such
thing to me. As far as I can recall, I never had any discussion
with him or with the Prime Minister or with anyone else in the
Prime Minister's entourage about GM foods so there was no direct
influence brought to bear. You have made an important point that
my views have become sharper over time and that is undoubtedly
true. The reason for that is not because I was either suppressed
by external dark forces or because I just chose to keep my light
under bushel, it is simply that, like everyone else, this had
been an odyssey. When I took this job in 1997 GM to me probably
meant Greater Manchester. I did not have any knowledge of the
genetic modification process at all. Like everyone else, I had
to find out what it was and I was a gradual learner and like everyone
else who has approached this I was a sceptic—a sceptic in
the best sense of the word, I did not have a set view, I was neither
for nor against. But it is also true that as time went on and
as I did understand more my views have become clearer and sharper,
not for ideological reasons but simply my own judgment applied
to the greater knowledge as I gradually acquired it.
Q52 Mr Savidge: Following the same
line to some extent, how far do you feel Ministers could come
under pressure to facilitate the commercialisation of GM by the
extent of public investment in biotechnology and GM research during
the 1980s and 1990s?
Mr Meacher: Again, I cannot answer
that. I had one meeting with SCIMAC shortly after I came to Defra
and I think a few meetings when I was still at DETR and no meetings
after that. I have always imagined that they went more directly
to Number 10, although I have no evidence as to what they did,
but they did not talk to me. I certainly am aware, of course,
that biotechnology is a very important industry, a very important
industry, and I will be the first to say so. This area for the
advancement of science is an absolutely key one and everyone is
in favour of it in terms of its application to pharmaceuticals
and drugs. It is just its application to the nation's food supply
and the perception of the British public that this was an attempt
to corner the world's food supply for their own commercial gain
which I think has produced such very strong and bitter resistance.
But I do not think biotechnology or the research involved in that
is a bad thing, quite the opposite. The Prime Minister often says
he is in favour of science. So am I. I am even more in favour
of science. I want to see more scientific testing perhaps even
than he does. So I think biotechnology is a thoroughly good thing.
It is the application that we need to be concerned about. It is
of course true that Monsanto, who have gone into the food aspect
of this, have invested colossal sums and, as everyone knows, have
very close relations with the White House and it is alleged, but
I cannot give any validity to this, that there are discussions
between the United Stated and Britain at the highest level on
this matter. I cannot confirm that or disconfirm it but it may
well be the case because huge investments have been put into this
and of course they want their return. My own view is that they
should learn the lesson that the EU is not going to budge and
that they should cut their losses and change direction to areas
which are likely to be more lucrative in future.
Q53 Mr Savidge: I wonder if I could
just ask you to amplify that last line of thought. How far do
you feel the British Government could come under pressure from
the United States either in the WTO or through other ways?
Mr Meacher: I think in the WTO
the Farm Scale Evaluation results, as I have said, provide far
and away the best and most solid evidence for the EU to resist
US pressure in terms of the moratorium. I have to say the UK has
not been in favour of the moratorium. There are 8 Member States.
They do involve the other three of the big four (if one can use
that word), Germany, France, Italy and another five states, so
it is actually a majority of the states but that does not include
the UK. I think the view taken in the UK, which I understand and
which I have accepted, is that if there is a due legal process,
which we after all agreed to, 2001-18—I was the Minister
who took that through and I believe I was absolutely right to
do so—we should abide by due legal process under EU legislation
which we have agreed. My view was that we should resist on a totally
different basis, namely the use of the precautionary principle
on the grounds that we did not have, neither we nor any other
EU Member State, the evidence upon which to take a profound long-term
and irreversible decision about impacts on the environment and
human health until a lot more systematic investigation had been
done, particularly on the health side, which is still not done.
Those were my grounds. I agreed with the objective that we should
not proceed but not with the methods which were used by the other
Member States.
Mr Savidge: Thank you.
Q54 Mr Chaytor: Could I pursue the
question of the absence of research into the health impacts. I
know that you have looked carefully at what happened in Canada
and the United States and the preparations for the introduction
of GM there but are you saying there are no studies of the impact
upon human health at all?
Mr Meacher: My understanding is
that what happens is that a biotechnology company introducing
a new GM product looks at the comparator of its non-GM counterpart
in terms of nutrients, in terms of allergens (the substances which
cause allergies), in terms of toxins and if they are broadly similar
or very similar, I am not quite sure which it is, then it is regarded
as substantially equivalent and deemed on that basis to be safe.
I think that is absolutely unsatisfactory when we are dealing
with the long-term food supply of a country. I think that is not
adequate. A substantial equivalent is not a scientific concept.
The word "substantial" is totally anti-scientific; it
either is or it is not and you measure it until you know or you
do not know and you continue to replicate the work until you have
a clear answer. You do not say it is broadly similar or a substantial
equivalent. That has not been done and as far as I know—I
stand to be corrected but I have said this publicly many times
and I think if they knew of other evidence they would have come
forward with it—I do not believe there have been any independent
studies, with one exception that I am aware of, which was a study
done in Newcastle University last year when GM Soya was fed to
a sample of people. Ironically, this was set up by the Food Standards
Agency, who thought that they were going to confirm the scientific
view that the gene would not transfer into other organisms or
rather parts of the organisms and contrary to what the scientists
thought that is exactly what happened in half the sample; it did
jump into the gut bacteria. Now, that was a real shock and I have
publicly regretted the fact that the Food Standards Agency's response
to that was that there was nothing new in this. That is patently
untrue; it was a shock result. Secondly, that it was no risk to
public health. That, again, I think is not correct because if
that were to happen it could compromise antibiotic resistance
in a person. So I think that their response was a sad one and
an improper one and what they should have done, if they disbelieved
it, was to say, "We would like this to be checked. We're
very surprised at this and before we confirm it we are going to
replicate it with a whole series of other tests." If that
had been done, which is the normal scientific process, that would
have been perfectly correct, but they did not do that.
Q55 Mr Chaytor: To the best of your
knowledge nobody elsewhere in the UK or North America is pursuing
this kind of research?
Mr Meacher: As far as I know,
they are not. Of course there have been animal tests, the notorious
Pushtai test where rats were fed potatoes which had lectin, which
had GM, and what he found was that there were moderate to severe
stomach lesions and other impacts. Now, large parts of the academic
establishment led by the Royal Society came down like a ton of
bricks on him. Again, I think that was a very sad day for science.
What they should have done was to carry out further tests to see
whether it was replicated or not, but that did not happen. All
that I can say is that it is certainly clear that the level of
allergies in the population has increased both in this country
and in the United States and of course if you do introduce a genetically
modified organism into a person, a mammal or a creature that is
of course a novel product and it will in some cases—and
we do not know exactly how or why or how you predict it—produce
allergic reactions. That is how the body protects itself against
that kind of introduction. We do know the number of allergies
has doubled in this country, according to the work done by the
York Nutritional Laboratory since GM was introduced. We also know
that the official US disease centres, or centres for disease surveillance
I think they are called, have also found in the United States
the number of food-related illnesses has doubled since GM was
introduced in 1996. That is not of course a causal connection,
it is a correlation which needs to be followed up, but I think
it is sufficiently indicative that it should be followed up.
Q56 Mr Chaytor: In terms of any future
research on the health, given the quantity of GM material in the
organism is going to be so small anyway is it possible in your
view to conduct statistically reliable surveys on the health impact?
Mr Meacher: Well, I think it is.
Q57 Mr Chaytor: Or will we have to
input so much GM material that it would be quite abnormal and
equally unreliable?
Mr Meacher: I can see the difficulties
that you are referring to but it does seem to me that scientists
are very good at designing tests to isolate a particular variable
even in an environment which means that it is difficult to concentrate
on that one variable. There are ways by which one can do this.
I have no doubt that it can be done if we chose to do so, or we
can get very close proxies, but I believe it could be accurately
done and that people could be fed over a period of time under
strict surveillance GM food and a matched sample who would eat
normal, conventional food and we could see over time what the
consequences were. I appreciate that one of the problems over
this is that things take a long time to come out. As we know,
notoriously over BSE it did take years before it became apparent.
But we need to do the scientific tests as rigorously, systematically
and as persistently as necessary in order to get the best results
we can at this time and continue to replicate those in future.
Q58 Mr Chaytor: Finally, the question
of timescale and the trials and the impact of gene transfer over
time. The Defra website contains a short piece referring to the
identification of gene stacking in Canada. Do you think it was
a flaw in the trials here that we were not able to or decided
not to consider the question of gene transfer in this way and
is there an issue of the cumulative effect of sowing year after
year after year which has not been trapped in this current trial?
Mr Meacher: Of course these trials
were about particular fields, which in most and perhaps all cases
were isolated throughout the whole of the British Isles. So there
was not a critical mass with the effects of cross-pollination
being quite normal and occurring all over the place. These were
very isolated trials in these individual fields so it is highly
unlikely that gene stacking would be picked up in the course of
these trials. But once you commercialise GM it will happen very
quickly because volunteers, that is plants which are not harvested
and which fall back after the harvest into the soil and which
grow up—and this is an interesting point from Canada—not
necessarily just the next year but any time, they may lie in the
soil for five years or even ten years and then grow up and because
there is a rotation of crops it might have been an oilseed rape
plant but when you are growing whatever it is, maize, either the
next year or two, three or five years later it becomes a weed.
So you have to get rid of it but you cannot use glufosinate or
whatever you used originally because this plant is resistant to
it. So you have to use other chemicals and sometimes you will
have plants which are resistant to two or three of these chemicals.
That is what is meant by gene stacking. My Department's answer
when I raised this was that we would consider this very carefully
when applications were made for new GM products or any applications
to cultivate in this country and it will be part of the application
process. I must say, I have always regarded that as a rather tenuous
kind of argument against the likelihood of gene stacking occurring.
I think if we were to commercialise GM crops in this country gene
stacking would almost certainly arise and very quickly.
Q59 Mr Savidge: Just very briefly,
I was rather surprised at what you said in relation to Dr Pushtai's
experiments because it was my impression that three separate independent
studies by scientists indicated not just that they did not find
his results persuasive but that in fact some of the experiments
he claimed to have conducted he had not conducted, according to
the people who were working with him, and that in fact he was
a man of considerable expertise but he was actually working outside
his own area of expertise and possibly in ways which were not
really legitimate. I am a little surprised that you should seek
to base anything on those tests.
Mr Meacher: Well, I do not wish
to make judgments about Dr Pushtai. I was not aware that he was
accused of carrying out trials which his colleagues said he did
not. I cannot speak one way or the other on that. The fact that
he may have been working outside his normal area of expertise,
again I am slightly surprised at that, but even if he were what
matters in science is the quality of the result, not whether it
happens to be in the area in which you have conducted most of
your research. But the important thing is that it was peer reviewed
in six journals, five of which accepted that the work needed to
be treated as a serious contribution to science.
Q60 Mr Thomas: Just to return to
this interface between the public health and the public perception
of GM crops, the counter-argument to some of the things you have
been saying this afternoon is to point to America and to say:
well, look, here is the most litigious country in the world which
sues everything that moves, which has been eating GM crops for
six years and no problems have arisen. Does that not suggest that
all we are talking about here is public perception, not real health
risks but just public perception? How would you respond to that
claim and also how does that then reflect on what the Government
is doing in this country in terms of public perception?
Mr Meacher: My response to that
is that there have been no epidemiological trials to validate
that conclusion and therefore no one, in my view, actually knows
the answer to it. The fact that there has been allegedly, according
to the official US disease monitoring centres, a doubling of food-related
illnesses over the last seven years does suggest there is more
there to be investigated than just an assumption that it has not
had any effects. People say it has had no effects because allegedly
no one has died from it and I do not think anyone, even the greatest
sceptic, is suggesting that GM will probably kill you. It is much
more subtle than that—its impact on the immune and endocrine
system, its impact on organ development, particularly in young
babies, its impact on metabolism, its impact on gut flora and
from animal tests its impact on stomach lining. These are all
things which would not be immediately or rapidly noted even by
the person concerned until perhaps years later and it might be
attributed to completely different causes. It is a very difficult
issue to be sure about but I think bland assurances that there
is no evidence and therefore it must be all right—the fact
is, we have not looked for the evidence. I was repeatedly being
told that there is no evidence of any greater risk from GM than
from the non-GM counterpart and that seems to me an extraordinary
phrase to use when no one has checked to find out whether it is
correct. No one has looked for the evidence to justify it. I passionately
believe, particularly after these environmental trials, if someone
had said three or four years ago, "You know, there are significant
differences between the effects of the use of chemical weedkiller,
between GM and non-GM," people would have said, "I don't
really believe that." The nil hypothesis was what was expected,
that there would be little or nothing between them. That is what
everyone expected. That is what the scientists expected, I am
sure that is what SCIMAC expected, but it turned out not to be
true and I think when you are dealing with human health you do
not take risks. I think it is utterly irresponsible to take risks.
If this was the only thing we had to depend on, if you were dying
of a disease, you would take a new drug which had not been as
fully tested as you might like because you are going to die anyway,
but most of us are not in that situation. We do not need GM for
our food, it is not necessary, it certainly is not going to feed
the starving masses of the world, as is claimed. We have lived
150,000 years on this planet without GM. It is not necessary.
I am not opposed to it if there are genuine benefits. There are
no consumer benefits at the present time. The producer benefits
are all strongly disputed. Why, therefore, do we do it? That is
the argument of the British people and I think they are extremely
sensible.
Chairman: Well, on that note, thank you
very much indeed, Michael. It has been a fascinating and stimulating
session, and all without a brief! So thank you very much indeed.
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