Select Committee on Environmental Audit Minutes of Evidence


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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