Examination of Witnesses (Questions 400-419)
10 DECEMBER 2003
DR ROGER
TURNER, MR
DANIEL PEARSALL,
DR PAUL
RYLOTT AND
DR COLIN
MERRITT
Q400 Mr Challen: Was it any part
of the contract to prescribe how these sites should be cleared
up after the trials were finished?
Dr Merritt: There was an element
in the contract that explained the requirements under the consent,
in terms of the crop disposal, yes.
Q401 Mr Challen: Who polices that?
Dr Merritt: It differed from crop
to crop. In the case of sugar beet we policed it alongside British
Sugar, who had their people, and it was also, of course, monitored
by the official inspectors—not always at the same time—at
the time of harvest, but we had at least two parties there to
monitor at every trial.
Q402 Mr Challen: At what intervals
after the close of the trials was that taken?
Dr Merritt: On the harvest day
and then various times subsequently.
Q403 Mr Challen: How long after were
the last observations taken or monitoring done?
Dr Merritt: It varied. In the
case of sugar beet, again, one of the requirements was that the
site would be ploughed at an appropriate time after the site,
and normally that was done fairly quickly. So once that had been
done we were into our statutory consent requirements for post-trial
monitoring, which involved the following spring and the following
summer monitoring. In one or two cases alone, where weather conditions
delayed the initial ploughing, we had to monitor it on a number
of additional occasions. In one case, which involved quite a lot
of controversy down in the South West, as a result there was some
discussion there with Friends of the Earth, who were monitoring
that particular site, and we did ourselves inform the official
inspectors to make sure they went and verified the situation.
Dr Rylott: As for the maize, of
course, there are no official monitoring requirements because
it has a full Part C. For the oilseed rape, again, due to the
conditions of the consent you have to control the volunteers that
grow up in the field the following year—the GM volunteers
in the GM half. They have to be controlled during the next year
and there is to be no oilseed rape grown within two years on that
site. So, clearly, the monitoring requirement we carried out ran
for two years after the harvest. CSL, the Government' GM inspectorate
unit, follow a similar monitoring process to ensure that we have
complied with all those consent conditions. I am happy to say
we have.
Q404 Chairman: Just coming back to
the issue of contracts Mrs Clark was exploring with you, I think
it would be of enormous help to the Committee if each of you were
prepared to give us—if necessary in confidence—a copy
of the standard contract. Would you be prepared to do that?
Dr Merritt: We discussed this
just before we arrived. I think we probably would but I would
need to consult my legal department. Clearly, there were reasons
at the early stage why we did not want details of the commitments
to support being shared with, potentially, people that wanted
to interfere with the trials process, about which it was made
quite clear that was happening. That is why we kept those kinds
of details confidential at the time, but I would certainly be
happy to put to my legal department that we share these now that
the programme is over with yourselves on a confidential basis.[2]
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
Q405 Gregory Barker: If I can just
refer to the SCIMAC memorandum, briefly, in that it said—and
I quote "Both the GM Inspectorate and ADAS . . . confirmed
very high levels of compliance with [SCIMAC] guidelines across
all sites throughout the FSE programme." Yet this has been
questioned by various bodies, not least the Soil Association directly
when they gave evidence to this Committee. Notwithstanding the
work of ADAS, are you certain that there were no significant breaches?
Mr Pearsall: I think we set out
in the memorandum the three processes of audit that were carried
out at the FSE sites: one a statutory requirement by the GM Inspectorate,
the other an independent audit commissioned by SCIMAC ourselves,
by ADAS, consulting. We would have no reason to doubt the independence
or integrity of that audit process. We are aware of anecdotal
reports of farmers not observing the guidelines. I think there
was one specific case in Scotland, which we investigated thoroughly,
in which a farmer was not able to comply with certain aspects
of the guidelines in the face of protest activity and acting on
police advice. I would stress that the SCIMAC guidelines are there
to deliver certain objectives, and the purpose of our investigation
into that particular instance was to assess and confirm that the
objectives of the guidelines, in this case in relation to volunteer
control, had been met by the farmer, and the fact that he had
been forced to deviate from certain elements of the guidelines
because of the incidence of protest activity and which, acting
on police advice, had compelled him to do that. I must stress
that the SCIMAC guidelines were developed for normal commercial
activity, and we would not see those kind of circumstances as
part and parcel of normal commercial activity.
Q406 Gregory Barker: So in answer
to the question, there were or there were not any significant
breaches?
Mr Pearsall: The ADAS audit concluded
that there were no non-compliances in any of the critical control
points that were identified. The GM Inspectorate confirmed there
had been no breaches of the consent conditions.
Q407 Gregory Barker: In relation
to Scotland, which you raised, you are obviously aware that there
is a statement under oath in the Scottish court by the Head of
the Scottish Executive GM Co-ordination Team that in his view
the guidelines were never properly imposed in Scotland?
Mr Pearsall: Well, I reiterate
my previous point that the SCIMAC guidelines were followed. We
are aware of one instance at a particular site in the Black Isle,
where concerns were raised to us and we have investigated them,
where a grower was unable, in this instance, to clean out his
seed drill in the field before returning to the farmstead because
he was acting on police advice to sweep off the edges of the seed
drill and drive the tractor, plus drill, back to the farm before
conducting the cleaning operations. That was on police advice,
as I say.
Q408 Gregory Barker: So the comments
of the Scottish Executive GM Co-ordinator, you believe, solely
relate to that one incident?
Mr Pearsall: As far as I am aware,
that would be the case.
Q409 Gregory Barker: Have you looked
at the Soil Association views on this—the wider point they
have made on this? Have you looked at their challenge?
Mr Pearsall: I think it would
be fair to say that the Soil Association, perhaps, have established
a different set of criteria by which they would regard how any
cultivation of GM crops should take place. The guidelines that
we have developed were based on practical experience and workable,
science-based practices.
Q410 Gregory Barker: You have looked
at what the Soil Association have had to say and, in your view,
it does not constitute anything that would lead you to believe
that there had been a breach?
Mr Pearsall: I am very sorry,
I am not aware of the specific reference—
Q411 Gregory Barker: You are not
aware of it.
Mr Pearsall:— that you are
making.
Q412 David Wright: When did the industry
first become aware that atrazine was likely to be banned in Europe?
Dr Rylott: It is not one of our
products, so it is not something that I have followed closely.
Q413 David Wright: Comments from
SCIMAC? When were you aware?
Mr Pearsall: When the announcement
was made earlier this year by the European Commission. I would
add to that and say, from the perspective of our involvement in
the trials, that was concerned with the GM component of the trials,
not with the non-GM component. Farmers were advised to manage
the non-GM component in line with their current practice and,
therefore, I think the question of decisions around the use of
atrazine or any other product which might, during the process
of the FSEs, have been withdrawn or no longer available is not
a particularly relevant issue for our involvement in the trials.
Q414 David Wright: The reason I raise
it is because we have taken a range of evidence on atrazine, as
you will be aware. Mark Avery, for example, of the RSPB said to
us recently that (the relevance of that study . . . [on maize]
is much reduced by the fact that the comparison that was done
[using atrazine] is now out-dated. Do you agree with that assessment?
Dr Rylott: No. We do not agree
with that assessment because, again, it is very important that
these trials were comparing current farming practices with what
potentially could be a farming practice associated with a GMHT
crop. It is very clear that now the EU have made a decision that
over the next, I believe, two years atrazine will be phased out
(it is not an overnight ban—and we have to stress that)
farmers will now be using different chemistries on the forage
maize crop in two to three years( time to what they are currently
doing. When you look at what other chemistries that could be used
on forage maize crop may be, they include chemistries that are
still residual chemistry, and there are some contact herbicides
like Liberty or glyfosat which could be used, but they also have
some residual activity. So we do not believe that in reality the
differences are going to be as substantial as some groups would
like to suggest they might be. We think it is just a bit of a
red herring because they did not like those results.
Q415 David Wright: That is interesting.
We took some evidence from Professor Pollock of the SSC and he
was advising us, from memory, that about 25% of the conventional
crop comparators had not got atrazine used on them, but there
is some concern, I know, within the industry that that may not
be a large enough sample to make a comparison with a non-atrazine
based conventional product. What is your view? Do you think that
the results from the 25% sample, if you like, are going to be
useful in comparing with GMHT?
Dr Rylott: Clearly, the principles
of weed control in the forage maize crop remain the same, whether
it has used atrazine or any other residual chemistry. What you
are doing is comparing the current farming practices with potential
farming practices in the future. There have been, for example,
(whilst it has not been brought to your attention) other chemistries
that have been taken off the market during the period of the Farm
Scale Evaluations which have not raised the same concerns, because
they just happened to be in crops on which they agreed with the
results in the first place anyway. I think you have just got to
say "Bang. There we go. This is what we have got. We have
compared this one with this one, this is what may happen in the
future." For all we know, as an industry, there could be
a whole range of other chemistries that are not on the market
in three years' time.
Q416 David Wright: Do you think it
is possible to make an assessment of a product that may be used
in five or ten years' time?
Dr Rylott: You are comparing current
farming practices now—you have got to compare apples with
apples.
Dr Merritt: In a way, that is
a very substantive question, because we are dealing here with
a snapshot, effectively. You could change minutia and say "This
no longer applies to anything", but the point is what we
were comparing were typical commercial farmers' decisions with
a range of products available to them. It is true of whichever
crop it was, and farmers are aiming, at the moment, for a particular
kind of result. If they substitute one chemistry for another chemistry
in some of that work it does not really change the overall objective.
So I think if we started to try to suggest that this kind of research
only applied on exactly the same Tuesday afternoon with exactly
the same material we would never get anywhere with research. Do
you see what I am saying? They were comparing a general, overall
comparison between this new technology and the typical existing
technology.
Q417 David Wright: Did you use the
occasion of the Farm Scale Evaluations to bid for Pesticides Safety
Directorate approval for glufosinate ammonium?
Dr Rylott: No.
Q418 Paul Flynn: I understand you
advised farmers as individual companies on the use of herbicides.
Was that part of the contract, and do you know of any occasions
when the farmers disregarded that advice, or flouted it in any
way?
Dr Merritt: First of all, no,
it was not part of the contract but it was obviously important
that the farmers had some advice on which they could base their
decisions. I have explained this personally to the ACRE open meeting
on a similar subject recently. This gave us something of a dilemma,
firstly because in order for farmers and their advisers to make
decisions about management they have to have a label or an advisory
leaflet to give them an idea of which kinds of treatments, doses,
timing and so forth to use. On the one hand, we did not have approval
for the herbicides and still do not for that change of use, therefore
we had to produce a draft label. We had to provide that to farmers
who had basically no experience of that product in that situation.
So we presented that leaflet and we also made that leaflet, incidentally,
available to both the Scientific Steering Committee and the Scientific
Consortium, so it was perfectly clear what was being advised,
and it gave farmers a choice. This is one of the questions that
we touched on earlier, about how applicable this is to real conditions.
One of the things that I think has come out of this is that it
was very clear to us at a recent meeting where the scientists
presented some of the data to the farmers themselves, hosted by
Defra, that farmers with the conventional herbicide packages responded
much more to the amount of weed that was present on the sites,
as they normally do; so if they have more weed they tend to apply
more of certain types of products. It is clear that because this
was new to them most farmers really stuck to the maximum recommendation
on the label rather than experiment with things. I think they
felt that as they were in this kind of trial situation they had
to do as they were told. I think there is an area that we can
identify where there is a lot of flexibility in here about how
farmers will eventually use these new technologies in order to
be able to reduce their inputs and achieve particular targets,
as they have done over the years with their conventional herbicides.
Q419 David Wright: What has been
suggested is that Bayer/Aventis were less flexible with regard
to the maize herbicide regime than Monstanto were with the beet.
Was this done to ensure that there was a better biodiversity in
maize?
Dr Rylott: No, not at all. I refute
that comment categorically. As regards the situation with the
agrochemical recommendations on the Farm Scale Evaluations that
had Liberty, which is a Bayer product, you will be aware that
we have an experimental permit that allows you to spray that herbicide
on the Farm Scale Evaluations. We have a series of regional advisers
whose job it is to advise agronomists and farmers on the best
use of our products—stewardship—whether that is a
20-year old product or for our new products. In this particular
instance, we followed a very similar approach to Monstanto where
we supplied the farmers and their suppliers, which are agronomist
firms, distributor businesses or independent agronomists, with
copies of the draft label, and also the experimental proof. It
is our role—
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