Examination of Witnesses (Questions 251-259)
3 DECEMBER 2003
PROFESSOR CHRISTOPHER
POLLOCK, DR
NICK BRICKLE,
DR BRIAN
JOHNSON AND
DR MARK
AVERY
Q251 Chairman: Thank you for coming to
see us. As you are all wearing slightly different hats, during
this session we may ask some of you some questions and other questions
to others. If you feel you have something valuable to contribute
to a question put to somebody else, please do not hesitate to
chip in. One of the things we have been looking at since the start
of this inquiry is who was actually responsible for the framing,
shaping and devising of the farm scale trials. Some of that is
beginning to become a bit clearer. May I begin by asking Dr Johnson:
we heard from Michael Meacher, and I do not know whether you know
this, that you were the originator of the trials. Is that correct?
Dr Johnson: I was one of the originators
of the trials in the sense that English Nature was the organisation
that raised the concerns that led to the trials. I was involved
in the early stages in setting up the trials.
Q252 Chairman: Were you responsible for
developing the "null hypothesis" approach to the trials?
Dr Johnson: If I remember correctly,
the "null hypothesis" resulted from a series of discussions
between ourselves and Defra and we agreed that the "null
hypothesis" properly addressed the concerns that we had raised,
yes.
Q253 Chairman: Do you think that the
way the trials were conducted actually reflected the original
ideas that you had?
Dr Johnson: Yes, I do. I think
that the trials were set up to investigate precisely the core
problem that we had identified that could stem from the use of
these crops. We were pleased that the Government had taken on
that task in terms of funding and allotting other resources. We
were also pleased that the design of it was very much formulated
to address the "null hypothesis" and nothing more.
Q254 Chairman: Were you involved, for
example, in the split fields idea?
Dr Johnson: Yes, I was. During
the first year of the planting, which is described I think
in my memorandum as a pilot year, we thought it would be useful
to look at how much information we had back from those fields
to enable us to make the decision about how the fundamental design
of the experiment would give us the power we needed to separate
the signal that we were looking for from the background noise
of the differences between fields. What we did was to look at
those results and ask the question: is a split field design better
than the paired field design for our purposes? The answer was
emphatically "yes".
Q255 Chairman: It was at your instigation
that it was framed in that way?
Dr Johnson: I was a very strong
supporter of the split field protocol, yes.
Q256 Chairman: I am trying to tease out
your own personal role as well as the role of English Nature.
Dr Johnson: That was my role as
an assessor sitting with the Steering Committee; I was not a member
of the Steering Committee.
Q257 Chairman: Once the broad shape of
the trials had formed, what was your own role in the next phase?
Dr Johnson: My role was really
to help get the whole thing off the ground in practical terms,
to sit in on the first few meetings with the Committee to make
sure that the design that emerged and the kinds of things that
were being measured would properly address the concerns that we
had raised. When I was content that that was the case, then I
took very much a back-seat role and left the nuts and bolts of
doing the experiment to one of my colleagues, Alastair Burn.
Q258 Chairman: Dr Avery, you were nodding
through some of that. Does what you have just heard concur with
your understanding of the way things developed in the early stages?
Dr Avery: Yes, it does. Looking
at some of the evidence that you have already had, the issue of
whether the scope of the trials was narrow or not is something
that has come up. I think the scope was narrow, but that is entirely
appropriate. Its focus was on a particular worry or concern that
was shared by English Nature and the RSPB and many other environmental
organisations that the large-scale commercial growing of GM herbicide-tolerant
crops would lead to harm in the environment, not primarily because
the crops were GM but, by being GM, the herbicides that would
be used on them would further damage wildlife in the countryside.
In the UK we have lost large amounts of our wildlife in recent
years. The Government updated its farming bird quality of life
indicator only yesterday, which shows that farming birds as a
whole are only at something like only 60% of their levels of 30
years ago, and so we have lost 40% of birds from the countryside.
Our concern, English Nature's concern and that of others is that
GM herbicide-tolerant crops, because of the broad spectrum of
herbicides that would be used on them, would make that situation
even worse. The trials were set up to examine whether there was
any difference at all in terms of seed burden and invertebrates
in the growing of conventional varieties and the GM crop. To that
extent, the scope was narrow, but it was entirely appropriate
because it focused those specifically on the question that could
be answered by science.
Q259 Chairman: What role did you actually
play in the whole process by which the trials took their eventual
form?
Dr Avery: The RSPB argued for
the trials to take place. We were a supporter of the trials, unlike
some of the environmental organisations from whom you have already
heard evidence. One of my staff, Dr David Gibbons, was a member
of the Scientific Steering Committee which was chaired by Professor
Pollock. As well as arguing that these trials should take place,
and we argued that on the basis that we believe that the regulatory
system which looked at the wider environmental effects of GM crops
was not good enough, I guess because of our knowledge of wildlife
and of farming systems and because we were a scientific organisation,
we were offered a place on the Scientific Steering Committee and
so one of my staff took up that place.
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