Examination of Witnesses (Questions 420-435)
10 DECEMBER 2003
DR ROGER
TURNER, MR
DANIEL PEARSALL,
DR PAUL
RYLOTT AND
DR COLIN
MERRITT
Q420 David Wright: Can you enlarge
on that point? How many of these agronomists were genuinely independent?
How were they paid? How many represented the industry?
Dr Rylott: We employ about a dozen
agronomists regionally. They would have gone to see the farmers
in conjunction with the agronomists that do that particular farmer'
recommendation. That would not be an agronomist that is employed
by Bayer or any of the other manufacturing businesses; it would
be an agronomist that was either truly independent—ie, he
just does that as part of his job—or is part of another
company such as Dalgety or Masstock or somebody that supplies
agrochemicals as part of a whole range of agriculture supply.
Q421 David Wright: You laid stress
in your report on Brooms' Barn. Nobody else thinks it is of much
significance at all. We had Brian Johnson (English Nature), and
Mark Avery (RSPB), and a whole stream of people, who suggested
that it proved next to nothing, and that seems to be the general
consensus from the witnesses that we had. Are you supporting what
happened at Brooms' Barn only because it suits your predetermined
hypothesis on this?
Dr Merritt: I would like to say
we are astounded at those comments from scientists. The Brooms'
Barn work began a couple of years prior to the Farm Scale Evaluations.
The Brooms' Barn work is a different kind of work in the sense
that it is small plot replicated, so it allows us to involve a
lot more treatments and a lot more comparisons of timings and
different doses of herbicides; it enables us to make a lot more
differing comparisons than you are able to do on a half-field
versus another half-field. The result of that work, which has
now gone on for about five or six years in all, has looked at
a whole range of different comparisons; it has produced a number
of peer-reviewed publications and it is by some of the most respected
independent government scientists there are—
Q422 David Wright: The point that
Brian Johnson made was to say that the study did not "actually
benefit the kind of biodiversity that we were concerned about".
Dr Merritt: Again, I find that
hard to understand. I think it has shown that under certain treatment
conditions you can dramatically increase, at certain stages of
the season—particularly from the beginning of the season
through to at least the middle of the summer through to the end
of July—certain plant life, in terms of weeds, and in terms
of certain invertebrates, and there are a number of peer-reviewed
publications that demonstrate that now. There is an argument here
about the biological significance of some of the comparisons between
the Farm Scale Trials and those other kinds of trials. Ecologists
are now themselves arguing about whether the crucially important
thing is seed shed at the end of the season versus massive increases
in invertebrates during May, June and July. We have been told
very often by some ecologists that massive increases in insects
in the early part of the season is critical to some nesting birds,
and we are told other things now. The point I am making is that
all of these different effects have to be looked at together,
rather than making sweeping statements that one piece of work
is to be disregarded when it is, in fact, a very impressive piece
of research.
Q423 David Wright: The aim of the
trial was nothing to do with yield and was to do with biodiversity,
but we understand there were informal records kept of yield. Is
this right?
Dr Merritt: In the Brooms' Barn
work there was yield measurement in some of the work, and in fact
some of the trials were specifically set up to compare the effect
of these; they had identified in the early stages, the first year
or two, that there were treatment situations that encouraged biodiversity,
and they wanted to evaluate whether that had an impact. Whereas
I have seen lots of discussion in your sessions and in other sessions
about whether yield should have been measured as such in Farm
Scale Trials—which is a wholly inappropriate protocol to
measure yield—small-plot replicated, where you have the
right kind of statistics to do yield measurements, were appropriate,
and they did compare yield under these different treatment regimes,
and have shown, in fact, in their most recent publication, that
there are circumstances and ways of managing the crop where you
can benefit from both yield maintenance and improved biodiversity,
and I think that work does need very serious consideration.
Q424 David Wright: You end your paper
by saying that the trials did not have any economic impact, or
any significant one, because agriculture contributes only 1% to
GDP. The amount of land that agriculture is using is about 70%
of the total landmass. What would have been economically insignificant
could be environmentally enormous.
Dr Merritt: I am glad you put
that very common statement to us. The comment we made was actually
referring to the Cabinet Office Strategy Unit report on the economic
implications on the country. The crops that we are talking about
are a relatively small, in some cases, proportion of the arable
cropping of the country. Whilst it is true to say that 70% of
our land is farmed, three-quarters of that is actually upland
pasture and is not arable crop. Within the arable cropped area,
which is, as I say, only 25% of the farmed area, the crops we
are talking about are a small proportion of that. If you take,
for example, fodder beet, which at the moment is grown on 10,000
hectares, that is not going to change dramatically the economics
or the environment as a whole, but that does not mean that we
are dismissing the fact that all these comparisons have to be
made pro-rata
Q425 David Wright: You quote one
investigation of public opinion on this which suggests that most
public opinion is indifferent; an equal number of people are attracted
to GM and an equal number are repulsed by the idea of GM. Do you
really believe this is the case? This seems to be at odds with
every other report that has been made, where it shows there is
a great deal of public unease about GM.
Dr Merritt: I am sure, as a politician,
you will be the first to appreciate that opinion polls depend
on how you ask the questions and on what information people have
on which to base their decisions. The most recent poll that we
quote from the Institute of Grocery Distribution's Consumer Watch
is based on their own consumers—if you like, un-led consumer
opinion—and this was their conclusion. The retailers are,
I think, the people who understand their customers better than
any of us. So that is the reason.
David Wright: Thank you.
Q426 Mr Francois: Are you happy with
all the officially published papers, particularly the summary
brochure that came out after the trials were complete?
Dr Rylott: No.
Q427 Mr Francois: Do you think that
the apparent public misapprehension about the results of the trial
are at least in part down to the fact that most people out there
seem to believe that the trials are about something far broader
or more significant than the biodiversity impacts of three or
four varieties of GMHT crops and their associated herbicide regimes?
Dr Rylott: Yes. I think we would
agree with that, in general. I think from the outset of the announcement
of the Farm Scale Evaluations it was clear that there were a number
of misconceptions that were put out in the press on more than
one occasion that continued to perpetuate those misconceptions.
I think, as the ABC report on Crops on Trial reflected,
a lot of that early misconception was due to some of the comments
made by the former Minister of the Environment. Typically, I think
it was seen as a green light—was the way it was portrayed
for so many years. We had constantly said, as an industry, of
course, that this was just a set of trials looking at one specific
set of criteria. This is saying: does the crop management of a
GM crop affect negatively or positively farmland and wildlife?
It was looking at the null hypothesis of looking at changes in
crop management—no more, no less. It was never going to
be a green light. So I think you are correct in saying that there
were a lot of misrepresentations, some possibly on purpose but
some not so on purpose. As for the results, I think it is very
clear that we feel that the way that the results were portrayed,
again particularly in the summary papers, was over-simplified.
Given that this is the world' largest ecological study in agriculture,
it should have been applauded as such because it says a huge amount
about agriculture in totality, not just about the comparison between
a GM and a non-GM crop. All of that sort of nuance was completely
missed in a desperate attempt to get a couple of headlines that
said "X=Y and Z=A."
Q428 Mr Francois: The trials took
a great deal of time, money and effort, that is evident. Yet all
of that has gone into only answering part of the question that
the general public really wanted answering in the first place,
has it not?
Dr Rylott: Yes, but that was all
it was ever intended to do; it was answering the specific question
(as I go back to saying): "Is there a positive or negative
effect from changes in crop management?"and I stress it is
changes in crop management, not GM—and "Can this benefit
the UK biodiversity or not?" That was all it was looking
at; it was never looking at anything else.
Q429 Chairman: I cannot resist pointing
out, even though you may not consider it friendly, on the subject
of misrepresentation, that I notice your own quote in a press
release issued by the Agricultural Biotechnology Council, where
you say: "These results confirm what the industry has long
argued, that the flexibility of GM crop allows them to be grown
in a way that benefits the environment." That was not what
many people understand to have been the outcome of the Farm Scale
Evaluations.
Dr Rylott: Can I respond to that
comment?
Q430 Chairman: Yes, by all means.
I am slightly worried about time.
Dr Rylott: It is very clear that
is exactly what the Farm Scale Trials did show. What it shows
is that these trials, this new technology, offers a huge amount
of extra flexibility to growers to sugar beet, forage maize and
oilseed rape. It is very clear, when you look at the results,
that what farmers are able to do is rather than taking a pre-emptive
strike against weeds, before any of them have come up, they are
able to take a view as to when to control the weeds and how much
chemical to use to control those weeds. That is flexibility, and
that is exactly what these trials show when you look at the results.
Chairman: You are expressing your point
of view, I am not expressing a point of view; I am merely pointing
out to you that there are others, and this Committee' task is
to sift through all the evidence and reach a conclusion, which
we will in due course.
Q431 Mr Challen: In the SCIMAC memorandum
you say that the Farm Scale Evaluations "represent a worst-case
scenario for GMHT treatments". What do you mean by that?
Mr Pearsall: I think it is back
to this point about the flexibility of the technology in terms
of the timing, the targeting, and the rate of application. The
studies that you have heard referred to, at Brooms' Barn, Denmark
and other studies in Holland, have looked at variations in the
timing, rates and targeting of herbicide applications with GM
crops in a way that is not possible with conventional weed control.
That is an advantage over the conventional weed control. The point
we make in relation to the management of the GM crops within the
Farm Scale Evaluations is that although a spread of intensity
was sought and, as you have heard, sought to over-represent the
less intensive sites within the non-GM component, the management
of the GM component of the trials was consistent throughout. It
was agreed in advance that a draft label approval and recommendations
would be made that were in line with cost-effective weed control,
and those were applied across all the trial sites irrespective
of whether they were regarded by the researchers as a more intensive
or less intensive farm.
Q432 Mr Challen: This flexibility
can mean lots of things, of course; it could mean different standards.
I am just looking at a letter that the Committee has received
from Defra today, which refers (and this is actually chiefly about
beets) to the SSC' advice on 8 February 2000 that the trials elsewhere
in Europe were not of a sufficient standard to provide equivalent
information. That is why beet was included in this programme.
Surely we should aim for the very highest standards. If you are
going to go out to the public and say "This is good for you"
or "This will not have a harmful impact on you" right
across Europe, you would want to say that we should have the very
highest standards. Are you arguing for flexibility of standards?
Dr Merritt: I think that particular
letter from Defra is referring to the decision they made on including
beet. The other field scale trials that had been taking place
were trials conducted in Denmark—the ones I referred to
earlier—and they were saying that the trials were not of
sufficient standard because they were not comparing the same things—the
measurements that the scientists in this programme were doing.
They were not comparable trials, so they wanted to see further
work. I think the flexibility question is referring back to this
dilemma I spoke of, as I explained to the ACRE open meeting, where
we are being asked under the GM regulations to nowadays, under
the revised regulations, provide improvements, if you like, to
biodiversity within how the crops are grown. At the same time,
to get the approval to use the herbicide, under the current regulations,
which go through a different department, through the PSD (the
Pesticide Safety Directorate) and the ACP (the Advisory Committee
for Pesticides), for the efficacy requirements we have to demonstrate
against a commercial standard that we are superior or equivalent
to a commercial standard. That is the information that farmers
were faced with. We know from all the other efficacy trials we
did to derive that basic label that if you brought the dose rates
down from the maximum, which the farmers tended to use in these
trials, certainly weed growth was much greater. So that is the
flexibility. We are caught between a brick and a hard place, if
you like, because on the one hand we are asked to get the level
of weed control up to meet certain standards, and on the other
hand we are saying if we are too good on weed control we are liable
to be stopped from using this technology because it is doing too
good a job. This was the dilemma that farmers were wrestling with
when they applied this label.
Dr Rylott: If I could just add
one extra point to this whole issue of flexibility and this whole
concept of what GM technology brings, it was very well summed-up
by one of the farmers to whom the data was presented the other
day—Defra presented all the Farm Scale Evaluation data to
the farmers. One of the guys said: "If I was given the opportunity
to grow these crops I would not grow them how I grew them in the
trial" he said, "because if I was growing forage maize,
rather than the way that I was asked to do it compared to my non-GM
maize, clearly I can only grow non-GM maize in one certain way.
With the GM technology, what I have learnt over the three years
is, for example, that I could under-sow it with grass or another
cover crop, which meant that when I harvested the forage maize
I would have a cover crop which mopped up nitrates over the winter
but also supply an over-wintered stubble (which currently you
do not get with maize during that period), and then, rather than
invert the soil yet again with a plough (which is one of the biggest
killers of invertebrates in the UK), I could direct-drill the
maize in the confidence that I could then control the weeds that
are there, the grass or the cover crop that I purposely drilled
the year before, with the chemistry that is available with the
GM crop, and I would have a completely different way of farming."
Of course, what we were not able to do with the Farm Scale Evaluations
was do that comparison, and that is what we are trying to say;
that, yes, on a straightforward comparison it is at least as good,
but given all of the other opportunities it is a fantastic and
exciting opportunity for farmers.
Q433 Mr Challen: And the farmers(
income.
Dr Rylott: And the environment.
For the farmers' income as well, yes. It is actually worth £80
million a year.
Q434 Mr Challen: Is that a greater
good than possible harm to biodiversity? I know that, apparently,
you are unhappy with the amount of emphasis placed on the word
"harm" as opposed to "impact".
Dr Merritt: To take one example,
it was quite clear, if you look at the results on bees—just
to take one example—that there were ten times as many bees
in any rape seed crop, whether it was GM or not, than either of
the other crops. So, really, the trials themselves showed that
other factors in agriculture, like the choice of crop, were far
more significant. We have just seen an example of how policy affects
the countryside. Set-aside this year has been reduced by 50%.
At a stroke, 300,000 hectares of, essentially, weed growth has
been removed from agriculture without so much as a hint of consternation
in the media, or whatever, and here we are talking about the difference
between three bees as opposed to two bees in a kilometre' walking
in the summer in a beet crop. So we have to get these things into
perspective. That is the thing that we think was missing from
the interpretation of the trials.
Q435 Chairman: Thank you very much
for your time. You have certainly helped us put things in perspective
this afternoon. We are very grateful to you.
Dr Rylott: If there is anything
else we can help with we would be delighted.
Chairman: Thank you very much. There
is the matter of the contract. Perhaps that is something to return
to.
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