Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340-349)
3 DECEMBER 2003
PROFESSOR CHRISTOPHER
POLLOCK, DR
NICK BRICKLE,
DR BRIAN
JOHNSON AND
DR MARK
AVERY
Q340 Sue Doughty: What should happen
with the crops that were subjected to the trial? Do you think
they are dead in the water as regards their future in the UK?
Dr Avery: Yes, I do.
Q341 Sue Doughty: Is that all of them,
or two of them?
Dr Avery: Two of them. As we have
said, oilseed rape and beet. These trials were set up by Government
to look for environmental effects and they found very large, very
clear environmental effects that were agreed by everyone, so it
would be difficult to see how Government could conclude anything
other than to ban these crops. With maize, as we have rehearsed,
it was a good study, difficult to know what it means for the future
and more work is needed. That is where we are, I think.
Dr Johnson: For those two crops
of oilseed rape and beet, we know that the fields in current agriculture
are relatively weedy, we know that they allow seed banks to be
replenished between years of growing comparatively weed-free cereal
crops. That means that despite their very small area in the whole
of the countryside, although that may grow as a result of
growing biofuels, for example, they are disproportionately important
for farmland birds and other wildlife. In my view, these experiments
have demonstrated an effect which convinces me that if they were
grown by farmers as the crop of choice there would be a damaging
impact on biodiversity in farmland rotations and that is a sufficient
reason for saying that they should not be grown.
Q342 Sue Doughty: Thank you. I would
just like to return to something that Dr Brickle said earlier
because it was a very interesting point that was made about looking
at the effects of herbicides outside of the GM regime and you
were making some very important comments. We almost seem to be
getting into the ground of arguing that, in fact, what these tests
have done is shown us how little we know about conventional farming
and I think that was a very valid and important point that came
forward. Do you think there is some basis for considering this
is really of more pressing importance than future similar tests
on GM crops? Should we be getting to the stage where we are benchmarking
what we are doing in general rather than worrying about products
which people are not very keen on and not very comfortable with?
Dr Brickle: I agree. I think these
highlight the indirect effects that pesticide use has on wildlife
that has led to the decline of farmland wildlife in the UK. It
has added to our understanding but what it has highlighted is
that we do not do anything about it as much as do not understand
it.
Professor Pollock: There is a
move among people, academics, who discuss these issues, which
I believe is further advanced in Canada than it is in this country,
to look at novelty rather than technology in terms of regulation.
This is something that is worthy of further consideration. It
is not the technology that you use getting from A to B, it is
the impact of having got to B which is the thing that we should
be concerned about in terms of agriculture. If you look at the
changes in agriculture since the war, the vast majority of which
have been done through what is labelled conveniently as conventional
breeding and agronomy, then that supports that argument.
Q343 Sue Doughty: This is certainly an
issue that this Committee has had over pesticides, for example.
Dr Johnson, is there anything you would like to add on this area?
Dr Johnson: Only to back up the
view that we need to understand the impact of farming technologies
and farming systems on biodiversity. If we are serious about having
evidence driven policy for improving biodiversity in farmland
landscapes then we need the evidence. I would argue very strongly
that certainly over the last 25 years that I have been involved
in these issues, this is the first time that we have actually
looked at the impact of a farming system before it has been introduced.
I have seen winter cropping coming in, I have seen lots of other
technological changes coming into the arable landscape with absolutely
no scrutiny whatsoever as far as the impact on the environment
is concerned. What I have seen is a lot of very late crying over
a lot of spilt milk. In other words, we have realised that these
things have gone wrong and they have produced a biodiversity-poor
countryside that we all feel is not desirable and yet we could
have avoided this by taking some pretty straightforward measures
had we had the evidence.
Professor Pollock: Can I just
add to that as well because that is something I feel very strongly
about. It is very important to get this point. This is not associated
inevitably with the use of agrochemicals because if you were to
look further west there is an agricultural practice that has had
equally as big an impact and that is the shift from hay to silage,
which has got nothing to do with anything that we have talked
about today but it has had an equally large impact on the countryside.
Dr Avery: I would agree with everything
that has been said. I think that means that the challenge ahead
scientifically of us is to develop a form of agriculture that
continues to deliver cheap, safe food but in a more environmentally
friendly way. That would be a challenge going forward which would
be in line with the way the UK Government is pursuing CAP reform
and with the recommendations of the Curry Commission. If we are
to develop a form of agriculture that is more sustainable we need
to redirect research effort into delivering that. We have had
30, 40, 50 or more years of going down a "let us maximise
production" route to the detriment of the environment and
that is what needs to change. If this study on GM crops helped
to turn that corner that would be a very valuable outcome from
it.
Chairman: It would be nice to end on
a note of general concord but Simon Thomas has one last question.
Q344 Mr Thomas: There may be agreement
on this one as well considering the previous answers. Those last
comments were extremely interesting to this Committee as part
of our work as the Environmental Audit Committee. Very, very rarely
do we get statistics that allow us to audit, that is why this
work is so important. What I want to know is you, as the Scientific
Steering Committee, had a specific remit to advise the Secretary
of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Scottish
Executive and the National Assembly on the need for future research
and you have made some interesting comments to this Committee.
Have you actually advised those three bodies of that need for
that research?
Dr Brickle: I think we have interpreted
that as future research pursuant to the "null hypothesis"
risk that we felt had addressed.
Q345 Mr Thomas: That is why earlier you
referred to ACRE's ongoing work in this regard?
Professor Pollock: Indeed. If
you look at the terms of reference of ACRE, that does have the
function of advising both in England and in the devolved assemblies
upon the scientific background to the broader issues of regulation.
I would hope that that debate would be energised by the debates
surrounding the science of the farm scale trials as well as their
regulatory implications.
Dr Brickle: The data is all publicly
available now, anyone could have it.
Q346 Mr Chaytor: I am sorry I was not
here at the start of the meeting. Just pursuing the point about
future research and considering the value of conducting research
on new processes in advance, who should bear the cost of that
in the future? This set of trials was at the public expense. Should
it always be at the public expense? Where is the dividing line
between what should be funded publicly and what should be the
responsibility of the manufacturer promoting a new technology?
Professor Pollock: My understanding
of the way in which the regulations are cast is that the risk
assessment, which includes now the wider biodiversity issues for
which the farm scale trials provided some kind of platform, is
the responsibility of the applicant in the case of GM. What I
cannot speak for is other novel agronomic technologies.
Dr Avery: I think it would be
the responsibility of a company bringing forward a new product
to convince the public, through the regulatory process, that that
product is safe and, therefore, that element ought to fall on
the company. However, if we are going to move, as I have just
said, to a form of agriculture where public support at £3
billion a year is shifting from production subsidies to delivering
public goods, if that is where public money is going and it is
wildlife, landscape, recreation, etc., that the public wants for
that support for agriculture, then I think it would be appropriate
for some Government money to go into helping change the direction
of agriculture. I think it is a company's job to show that its
products are safe but if the public goods are what we are looking
for then I think public investment would be justified.
Q347 Mr Chaytor: That is quite a tricky
precedent because you can envisage a whole series of new GM crops
coming forward for which there would need to be research to assess
the impact on the environment, you could not automatically reach
the conclusion that these crops had been part of these trials.
If we accept the distinction that you are drawing, we are talking
about considerable public investment in the future to assess the
biodiversity implications of a series of new potential crops,
are we not?
Professor Pollock: That is not
my understanding of the way the regulatory system is set up. It
is the applicant who does the risk assessment and it is the regulatory
system that looks at it.
Q348 Mr Chaytor: Within the term "risk
assessment" you are including biodiversity?
Professor Pollock: It includes
the wider biodiversity implications because that is part of EU
regulation. I think what Dr Avery is talking about is the big
picture, the idea of saying "Here is A, here is B, we need
to establish some railway lines to get there to establish that
B really is the right set of goals for the UK countryside".
It is very difficult to see how that could be done without some
form of public investment in the underpinning research. My understanding
is that the case by case issues are exactly what they say, they
are to do with a risk assessment which is the responsibility of
the applicant.
Dr Johnson: I think that doing
this kind of research that compares agricultural systems would
be very good value for money in terms of the delivery of better
biodiversity in our countryside because then we could be pretty
sure that changes that we want to introduce, for example via Pillar
2 money going on to farms, would produce the results we want to
see. In some cases we do have that information but for arable
landscapes very often we do not have enough information to make
those very certain judgments. I think that kind of research would
be very valuable, very good value for money for the taxpayer.
Q349 Mr Chaytor: You are making a case
for future research to contrast the impact of organic as against
conventional, for example?
Dr Johnson: Or silage against
hay systems, as Professor Pollock has pointed out. Do we really
know what impact silaging has had on the environment? The answer
is that we do not really. We think we know and we can correlate
environmental damage with the shift in the system but what we
want to know more about is the mechanism behind that and how we
can change that to perhaps make silage cultivation less damaging
or we can bring in modern methods of hay production that would
be environmentally beneficial. It is that kind of research that
has been the Cinderella of biological research for far too long;
it is nice to see agro-ecology up in lights for a change.
Professor Pollock: I would agree
with that, speaking as a plant biochemist.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed,
it has been a useful and informative session. We are very grateful
to you for your time.
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