Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
Mr Ben Ayliffe, GM Campaigner, and Dr Doug Parr,
Chief Scientific Adviser, Greenpeace, examined.
Chairman: Welcome and thank you very
much for coming along. We know that Greenpeace are opposed to
genetic modification in crops. The purpose of this session is
to try and establish the grounds for their opposition, particularly
in relation to farm scale trials, to get your view on the value
of the science involved in those trials and to ask you where you
think we should go from now.
Q61 Mr Chaytor: The government has
always argued that GM crops were in no way dangerous to the environment
and were completely safe. Why do you dispute those two statements?
Dr Parr: In terms of GM crops
being safe, we feel that there are a number of issues where the
uncertainties are rather intractable and that genetic modification
represents a whole new class of risks which are not exhibited
by conventional breeding, where society has some experience. We
are quite pleased that the GM science review that the government
has instigated through David King has started to flag these up.
The reason that these were not identified properly, in our view,
beforehand is that there are certain limitations about the way
that science approaches these kinds of issues which have been
exemplified by the problems that have been thrown up in relation
to pesticides in the late 1980s, the impact of low level radiation,
and so on. The same kind of rather restricted attitude towards
the uncertainties has meant that they have not previously been
identified. With the GM science review, a more structured approach
to those uncertainties has started to be taken and it does start
to throw up the concerns about food safety, about gene flow, about
our very limited knowledge of ecology and so on, which have been
the reasons that we have been concerned.
Q62 Mr Chaytor: In respect of food
safety, what is there in the farm scale trials that has suggested
that GM crops are unsafe?
Dr Parr: There is nothing in the
farm scale trials.
Q63 Mr Chaytor: Is there anything
anywhere else? Is there any evidence to suggest that they are
unsafe?
Dr Parr: It depends how you look
at them. Has anybody died as a result of eating GM crops? As far
as we know, no, but as is sometimes said, case-by-case analysis
does not mean that if people have been eating crops in north America
for a considerable period of time and there have been no observed
adverse effects the next GM Soya approved is going to be safe.
It is the intractable nature of the uncertainties and the considerable
difficulty in constructing a regulatory regime to look for problems
when you do not know what they might be that are at the root of
this. It is not our contention that every GM crop is dangerous.
It is the uncertainties that are the problem and the ability to
identify what the problems are in advance.
Q64 Mr Chaytor: If there is uncertainty,
there must be something that would satisfy you about the uncertainty
question. There must be a point that could be reached or a body
of evidence that could be provided that would deal with the question
of uncertainty.
Dr Parr: In theory, yes.
Q65 Mr Chaytor: If it is only in
theory then it is always going to be uncertain and by definition
you will be continuously opposed to it.
Dr Parr: The uncertainties are
significant and not coming to any resolution in time soon. This
goes back to the nature of genetic modification and the way in
which there are changes of gene expression which have knock-on
implications for other parts of the genome and regulation of those.
Science is very powerful but it has considerable difficulty deciding
whether something is or is not a problem when there is not a hypothesis
that can be framed to deliver on the answer. For the sake of argument,
let us take a GM food example. If you are not sure whether the
potential problem is going to be an immunological one, a toxicological
one or an allergenic one, where do you focus your effort? For
those cases of allergy where one can construct decision trees
to say, "Can we look at this GM food and decide whether it
is a problem or not?" okay, you can focus your effort there
but again the GM science review flagged up that there are limitations
in our knowledge which are at quite a fundamental level. We do
not know how the immune system works and how it responds to allergen
challenge in such a way that it stimulates these very strong immune
reactions in certain people. The theoretical basis on which that
is understood is very poor, which is why we see auto-immune disorders
like asthma which can be treated, but only in a symptomatic way
rather than a fundamental way.
Q66 Mr Chaytor: The Greenpeace objection
is not a fundamental objection to genetic modification as a principle
but an objection on the grounds that we have insufficient knowledge
of all the potential consequences?
Dr Parr: Greenpeace does not object
to genetic modification. We object to releases to the environment.
When genetic modification is performed in properly contained conditions,
the surprises that will emerge like, for example, three years
ago when a mouse virus was engineered with an interleukin gene
to make the animals more infertile and it turned out to be completely
deadly; if you find this out in a lab you can learn and maybe
understand but releases to the environment are a whole different
ball game.
Q67 Mr Chaytor: In terms of the biotechnology
industry as a whole, you have no fundamental objection to biotechnology?
Dr Parr: We make a complete distinction
between the pharmaceutical industry and the crop industry. We
also recognise that for certain techniques like marker-assisted
breeding some use of genetic engineering in a contained form can
enhance the potential for crop improvement through that technique
which is essentially a way of speeding up conventional crop breeding
to get to the end goals more rapidly. Normally crops go through
a series of field trials and so on. We recognise that that GM
can take place and does take place in this context and it is to
an end goal that we are happy with and support. It is the release
to the environment that is the problem and there we do see that
there are intractable uncertainties about ecological impact, where
it is difficult to see any resolution in the near term.
Q68 Chairman: Do you not accept though
that, the whole point of the farm scale trials was that they were
farm scale? They could only be done out in the open and in the
environment because that was the nature of what was being tested.
It is very difficult to do that in a laboratory.
Dr Parr: Yes. There are things
that could only be done in the open. However, we still did not
think that these should be taking place because of the uncertainties
I have just been referring to. That should not have been the starting
point. There were other starting points about soil ecology and
so on which needed to be addressed. That being said, they have
produced interesting results.
Q69 Mrs Clark: You started by telling
us about some very profound concerns you have about GM altogether
but why not ask the questions then? Why not have these farm scale
trials, particularly if you are confident that some of the answers
they are going to be coming up with would suit your argument?
Michael Meacher, who we interviewed last week, very much felt
his own queries and objections were strengthened by the results
of those very particular trials. What are your grounds?
Dr Parr: With respect, it was
very unclear what the results were going to be when these trials
were initiated. Our concerns were similar in some ways to the
Agriculture and Environment and Biotechnology Committee, who saw
in government pronouncements that the results were going to be
over-interpreted as an all clear for GM crops.
The Committee suspended from 4.40pm to
4.50pm for a division in the House
Q70 Chairman: Helen Clark referred
to the evidence we took from Michael Meacher. He, to some extent,
feels rather vindicated by the whole exercise because the result
of the farm scale trials was very different from what the scientists
and probably the government had expected. Do you not feel that
you have a problem because you objected to the whole thing from
the outset. The results were not what you expected and therefore
it is very difficult for you to use those results to say that
there has been an impact on biodiversity. Does it not undermine
your position?
Dr Parr: I would not say so. The
grounds that we have for opposing releases of GMOs to the environment
remain in force. They have taken place—by analogy you could
say we would rather a number of nuclear power stations had not
been built and the climate change was not happening and so on,
but these things have happened. We have to take the world as it
is rather than as we would like to see it. If the world was as
we would like to see it, we would not exist any more. We have
to be a little bit pragmatic about this.
Q71 Chairman: Were you involved at
all in the trials and the way that they were constructed? Were
you consulted?
Dr Parr: No.
Q72 Chairman: We know you offered
your opinions, but you were not formally involved?
Dr Parr: I do not think there
was a formal consultation about them. We offered our thoughts
on the matter.
Q73 Chairman: You were not offered
representation on the Scientific Steering Committee?
Dr Parr: No, for the reasons I
have outlined, where we had problems with the entire exercise.
That would have been extremely problematic for us.
Q74 Chairman: You would not have
accepted?
Dr Parr: No.
Q75 Mr Challen: In your memorandum
there are nine areas of concern which these trials have not looked
at.[11]
Would it not be correct to say that if we want a proper, scientific
study of a particular trait of GM crops that the government is
right in having a limited remit for such a trial? If you had all
your concerns added to a trial, surely the science would become
so obscure and contentious that it would make it very difficult
to draw any conclusions at all?
Dr Parr: Not necessarily. One
of the things that has been slightly surprising out of the trials
is that the evidence one way or the other has been much clearer
than had been expected. I would not say that if further studies
were done it would be completely inconclusive. I think sometimes
conclusions can be drawn provided there is an appropriate theoretical
framework within which such evidence can be grounded. I think
theories about how genes function and the nature of the impact
of genetic modification, the nature of our understanding of ecology,
in particular soil ecology and microbial ecology, are not at a
stage where such conclusions could be well grounded. On those
points, yes, I am agreeing with you that because there would not
be a theoretical framework to put it into you would produce data
but not really information.
Q76 Mr Challen: On this particular
study, the farm scale trials, are you unhappy with the way that
they have been conducted in this narrow area of research or are
you happy with the way that the research has been conducted?
Dr Parr: The Scientific Consortium
did a good job given the remit that they had. Notwithstanding
our concerns about the overall framework of what was being looked
at, I think everybody would agree that they have produced a lot
of very interesting data that shows quite a lot of things. In
terms of the design of the trials, there will be perhaps three
points. One was the base line against which the comparison was
made. The GM crops were being compared with conventional, by and
large intensive agriculture when, even at the time when the trials
were started in 2000, the sort of conversations, for want of a
better term, which were leading to the Curry report had already
been around for some time and it was comparing one system of agriculture
potentially being introduced with an existing one that there was
a fairly widespread level of dissatisfaction with. That seems
to us not a terribly appropriate benchmark. The second area where
we would have questions would be the relevance of the trials to
commercial practice. Mr Meacher probably explained at length about
the question of atrazine and its potential ban on its use on maize.
At the start of the trials, it is reasonable to say why would
anybody have known that necessarily. The Scientific Consortium
was doing the job that it needed to do, which was to look at conventional
practice. The other aspect of that is that there is a certain
amount of experience from North America about the use of some
of these crops, in particular glufosinate tolerant maize. The
experience there shows that a persistent herbicide would be used
in conjunction with those crops—persistent herbicide like
atrazine is the one that is commonly used but it would not necessarily
need to be that one—in combination with glufosinate tolerant
crops because that is what is required to give the level of weed
control that farmers want. In the trials, the use of herbicide
was broadly worked out by the companies concerned on the basis
of what they expected farmers would need to control weeds in the
GM crops. The evidence from North America is that they are using
additional, extra herbicides rather than simply the glufosinate.
The question of learning from other experiences and how these
crops would be deployed in practice is particularly pertinent,
given that there is experience from other areas, particularly
on glufosinate tolerant maize. Finally, I think there is a point
about inspections which Ben will outline.
Mr Ayliffe: This is more to do
with the operation of the inspectorate and the GM companies themselves.
In the summer of 2002 Aventis announced that they had been giving
seeds to farmers who were taking part in the trials that were
contaminated with an unapproved variety. This had been going on
at all Aventis oilseed rape sites throughout the entire farm scale
trial. Aventis did not realise this. The GM inspectorate who inspected
the Aventis seed logs only a couple of months before this news
broke had not any clue it was going on. It was only down to the
beady eyes of the Scottish Agricultural College that they found
out there was a problem. It goes back to the problem that a lot
of people have with the lack of control on GM, the idea that if
these companies cannot control relatively small scale field trials
what sort of problems are we going to face if they are allowed
to grow GM commercially?
Q77 Mr Challen: Would you say that
the omission of gene transfer studies from the farm scale trials
was a serious omission?
Dr Parr: Yes. My understanding
is that that was moderated to some extent because some research
was done, but it is true that the trials were not designed in
order to look at that. Other studies have been trying to look
at that at the same time. It is a yes and no answer.
Q78 Mr Challen: Is not gene transfer
a rather evolutionary process? What is your concern about that?
We have had gene transfers of various descriptions over the centuries,
if not over thousands of years. It is a natural process. What
is so different about this that you have so many concerns about?
Dr Parr: We believe that the nature
of genetic modification is different in terms of its impact on
the genome and it is able to confer particular new properties
in particular new ways. Because the genes are expressed in a context,
this can lead to unpredictable outcomes. Conventional crosses,
just as we find in conventional cross-breeding but also out-crossing
to related wild relatives, takes place within an envelope of possibilities;
whereas the importation of a gene from outside that species pool
or introduced in a new way can create the possibility—a
possibility, because not every GM crop is dangerous—of new,
possibly more vigorous, more competitive plants, all with different
properties.
Q79 Mr Challen: You have already
referred to comparisons with these trials and conventional crops.
Can you look at the comparison between these trials and organic
methods of agriculture? You say in your memorandum that organic
methods are sustainable. "Sustainable farming systems such
as organic or low impact systems were not studied."[12]
Is there something implicit there that GM crops are not sustainable?
Dr Parr: GM crops come from a
system that is driven by intensive agriculture and therefore support
it. This is to do not just with the technology but with the surrounding,
institutional arrangements. GM is popular with companies because
it allows patenting and control of intellectual property. The
use of GM in part was driving global consolidation of the seed
and ag-chem industry along with other factors that are applicable
to the steel or the car industry. In a globalised industry, streamlining
means that a company is looking to produce traits and crops that
are applicable in a wide variety of environments. That means not
an approach with is sympathetic to the local differences, where
locally adapted systems of cultivation might work in harmony with
the local environment, but one where you are controlling the entire
environment, which leads you down an intensive, agricultural approach.
11 Please see memorandum on Ev. 14-15. Back
12
Please see memorandum, Ev. 15, para. 6. Back
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