HOUSE OF COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT COMMITTEE

 

GM FOODS - EVALUATING THE FARM SCALE TRIALS

 

WEDNESDAY 10 DECEMBER 2003

DR ROGER TURNER, MR DANIEL PEARSALL, DR PAUL RYLOTT and

DR COLIN MERRITT

Evidence heard in Public Questions 350 - 435

 

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Environmental Audit Committee

on Wednesday 10 December 2003

Members present:

Mr Peter Ainsworth, in the Chair

Gregory Barker

Mr Colin Challen

Mrs Helen Clark

Paul Flynn

Mr Mark Francois

Mr Simon Thomas

David Wright

________________

Memorandum submitted by SCIMAC

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: DR ROGER TURNER, Chairman and Chief Executive, SCIMAC and British Society of Plant Breeders, MR DANIEL PEARSALL, Secretary, SCIMAC, DR PAUL RYLOTT, Head of BioScience, Bayer CropScience, and DR COLIN MERRITT, Biotechnology Technology Manager, Monsanto, examined.

Q350 Chairman: Good afternoon and thank you very much for coming along. May I begin by asking Dr Merritt a question about Monsanto= s engagement in the future of GM in this country. I think there has been an announcement that you are actually down-scaling your activities in the United Kingdom considerably. It would be very helpful, in case the press reports have not been accurate, if you would let us know exactly how and why.

Dr Merritt: I am very happy to do that. As was announced in the middle of October, our company announced its plans to sell the cereals business for Europe, which really amounts predominantly to a wheat breeding business B and this is a conventional wheat breeding business but it also includes some barley B which is predominantly the former Plant Breeding Institute Business, PBIC Business, of Cambridge and some related stations in Europe. It actually has nothing directly to do, contrary to some press reports, with our involvement in biotechnology, but obviously there are some conjectural links made to investment, which I cannot really particularly confirm or deny.

Q351 Chairman: You cannot confirm or deny them?

Dr Merritt: It is debatable as to whether that is indirectly related to market conditions in Europe. I think a better way to put it is that in corporate terms if you are looking at a given investment in resources at any one time, you look at wherever that is best placed in terms of return on your investment. That decision led to a number of changes at that time, one of which was the divestiture of that particular business.

Q352 Chairman: That does not send a message of enormous confidence about the future in this country, or indeed in Europe?

Dr Merritt: I think it sends to me, as a Briton and a patriot, if you like, some note of concern, amongst other changes in the industry, about confidence at the moment, but it does not directly link to the current question on biotechnology.

Q353 Chairman: Dr Rylott, I think your company also announced slightly earlier that, as it was reported, you are pulling out of GM testing in Britain. Is that correct?

Dr Rylott: No, that was not correct. What we announced was that, due to the legislation surrounding the way that this disclosure of the sites was made, with the six-figure grid reference and the constant and recently reaffirmed nature of some activist groups saying that they will destroy any trials that are put into the ground, we approached DEFRA to see if there was any chance of relaxing that disclosure so that they could actually uphold their statutory duties in being able to carry out these trials. ACRE themselves said that they had no concerns about the disclosure of the site, particularly as we were talking about a well-characterised GM that had been grown in the UK since 1989, but unfortunately DEFRA decided that they could not relax the disclosure rules. That meant that, quite frankly, the chances of being able to conduct those trials without there being interference was negligible, and so we took the decision to throw no more good money after bad. Until such time as DEFRA are in a position to carry out their statutory duties, we will not be investing money in trials.

Q354 Chairman: You take the view, which is not a view that has been expressed by others who have given evidence here, that the damage done to a small number of the sites severely compromised the integrity of the experiment?

Dr Merritt: No, this was a different set of trials. I apologise if I did not make that clear. These were National List trials, which are typically about the size of a tennis court, and quite clearly can quite easily be damaged overnight. Those have been targeted over the last three or four years to such an extent that in the last three years the Government has not actually got any results from those trials because they have been systematically taken out. That was the set of trials that we had applied for consent to continue with, but that was the set of trials as well where there was no relaxation on disclosure, and so we decided that we would not plant this year.

Q355 Chairman: What do you see as the long-term consequences for your company of being unable or unwilling to proceed with those?

Dr Merritt: The long-term consequences for our company are not particularly significant because, if you look at what is happening with GM around the world, it is going forward in leaps and bounds. I think the implications for the UK are quite obvious. When it comes to doing trials work, particularly the near market trials which need to be done specifically to the UK so that you are producing information that the farmers themselves can make rational decisions about in terms of which varieties they think perform well in the north of England or the tip of Scotland or whatever, those trials need to be carried out in the UK. If we are unable to continue to carry out those trials, then the UK farmers will be at a disadvantage.

Q356 Mr Challen: I am wondering, in the light of the evidence we received from DEFRA, which was that forage maize, for example and possibly oil seed rape were very close to commercial planting, how close those were to commercial planting before concerns were raised about biodiversity and so on?

Dr Rylott: I will try and answer those questions in the first instance, given that the forage maize and the oil seed rape varieties are Bayer technology. Just before the farm scale evaluations, the maize had a Part C clearance, which meant that it was eligible for planting anywhere within the EU, without any conditions of separation distance or notification or anything like that; it also had full novel food clearance and clearance for feeding to animals, which of course is its use. It was still awaiting the varietal national listing here in the UK, which you have to have before you can offer a variety for sale to farmers; it was also awaiting full herbicide clearance to allow the farmers to spray the herbicide on to the crop. That was the status of T25, as it is referred to. For oil seed rape, there are two scenarios. The first is that the oil seed rape actually had a full Part C clearance for seed production purposes in the UK, so it was eligible to be grown to produce seed in the UK, and that was just a UK-specific commercial clearance. When it came to European clearance, it had been given clearance for full-scale commercialisation within Europe but, unfortunately, due to the unlawful activity of the French rapporteurs, that was never posted, and so effectively it is caught within the rest of the de facto moratorium.

Q357 Chairman: What is the unlawful activity?

Dr Rylott: Basically, when you go forward to be granted a Part C consent, and that is a commercial licence for growing across the EU, that goes through a rapporteur country. In this particular instance, the rapporteur country was France. Basically they give it the clearance; they then pass it through to the other Member States to see if they agree with that decision. The rest of the Commission and the Member States agreed with that decision. It was then for the French effectively to post it on the website, for want of a better description. They did not do that and, within a few days of them not doing that, the de facto moratorium came into place. Had they done it when they were supposed to have done, it would also have been in the same situation as the forage maize.

Q358 Mr Challen: Was there any response from SCIMAC on the concerns that were raised?

Dr Turner: No, not directly.

Q359 Mr Challen: I am directing these questions generally at anybody who wants to take them up. What was your reaction to the Government= s desire to see the test for harm in the European Directive strengthened? Do you have any reactions to that?

Dr Turner: The particular varieties had been tested in the open air as part of the National Listing and developed by the crop variety owners over a decade or more. They had come through all of those with flying colours. I think that as and when 2001-18 came into effect, some, like the Part C maize, had already passed through and others were coming up to that point. I hope Monsanto and Bayer say the same. Basically, I think the feeling was that you would have them all as part and parcel of the same Directive, the same regulations, even though some had gone through it.

Mr Pearsall: I would add to that to clarify that in 1998 English Nature raised concerns about the biodiversity implications but it was clear in discussions around the revision of the Deliberate Release Directive from 1992/220 to 2001/18 that indirect environmental effects, including impact on biodiversity, would be taken into account. Towards the end of 1998, European Environment Ministers agreed that even prior to the ratification and finalisation of 2001/18, the biodiversity provisions would be applied to new applications. Our understanding was that, in the context of the concerns expressed by English Nature, the UK Government were in particular working to ensure that the same provisions were applied to applications which were already well advanced through the system. I think, from a SCIMAC perspective, we were supportive and recognised the rationale behind that. Clearly, as an organisation, SCIMAC is committed to the responsible and step-wise integration and development of this technology. In the context of agricultural policy developments, which were clearly placing environmental issues, including biodiversity, at the heart of the agenda, it made absolute sense to look at those effects. I think you really have some of the background to the establishment of the farm scale evaluations there.

Q360 Mr Challen: What does SCIMAC say? Is SCIMAC happy with the way that the legislative developments have taken place? It seems to me that to a certain extent we have had the cart before the horse B getting close to commercialisation and then we have some kind of halt whilst tests are taken and assessments made. I am looking particularly at the effect on your business of Annex 2, the European Directive 90/220/EEC, which says that that requires an assessment of all direct, indirect, immediate and delayed effects of the GM crops in the environment to make sure that that is included in the application for consent for the crop to be massed in the EU. Are you satisfied that that is the right way forward and, if so, why was this kind of approach not adopted before? That is, if I am right and I am just a layman.

Dr Merritt: In a way, this gets into some fairly complex regulatory matters, which I would probably even myself refer to more directly involved regulatory experts. Let me try to give you some lead on that. I think certainly we were at the tome, as a company, of the opinion that the Directive that you spoke of, which was 90/220, as we commonly refer to it, did have within it many of the provisions to look at direct and indirect effects of the crops on safety and the environment. Over a period of time, it was becoming clear that there was going to be a substantial change in terms of some additional elements under this revised Directive, which we now have, to work with. At any one time, we always find ourselves in a position of uncertainty about what future regulation changes may be, and so we have to work, as an industry, within what we see at the time, what we anticipate to be going to happen. We had already been doing work with the crops we were developing to address those kinds of questions. I am sure you will be aware that we were involved in similar kinds of biodiversity trials through the Danish Environmental Research Institute and also through our institution in the UK called Broom= s Barn Research Centre. Those trials carried on and were already ongoing at the time that the discussion about farm scale trials came about. We are always trying to anticipate change, obviously; we have to take into account what is going to help us bring our products to market, but we do not always have very good crystal balls about telling how things are going to change and when. That is how we saw things. Does that help?

Q361 Mr Challen: Is it just purely a case of anticipating what the legislation is going to be? Surely you yourselves would want to test the safety of your crops, and so on? It has been suggested that you did very little to look at the biodiversity aspects.

Dr Merritt: Certainly in our regard we do enormous amounts of testing. If I can make the comparison with conventional farm breeding, that is orders of magnitude different in terms of how much safety testing and environmental types of tests are done on products of biotechnology. Indeed, as was made very clear by government departments at the time of the farm scale trials B and I think this is a very important question to the public B had not many of these kinds of tests for safety already been done, the crops would never have been approved for field release in the first place to do trials. We had been conducting trials, literally hundreds of trials, in the field for about eight years before that discussion came up for farm scale trials.

Q362 Chairman: Is it not the case, though, and perhaps Dr Turner would like to answer this question, that the bearing of what you have told us is that if it had not been for English Nature stirring things up in 1998 and expressing concern about the impact on biodiversity, commercial planting would have taken place a great deal earlier and could even have taken place as early as 1999/2000?

Dr Turner: In theory, yes. I think there was a lot more going on as well as that with English Nature. The environmental groups were also pretty active. English Nature had a bigger role because, as an adviser to government, they would have to be listened to in that sort of respect. I do not know if the right words are that the flow to the market place was getting constipated and English Nature helped stop that process.

Mr Pearsall: Perhaps I could add that the whole issue of how any potential commercial introduction of the technology might occur stretches back really to July 1997, which was the origins of the SCIMAC group and when the newly-elected Labour Government issued a consultation, a fairly technical consultation, into the agronomic implications of new types of herbicide tolerance on the farm. It was made quite clear within that consultation that the status quo was not an option. New legislation at a European level, or new legislation at a UK level, or a complete ban on the technology were among the options, as was a code of practice for managing the agronomic implications of herbicide tolerance. This was to look at issues like volunteer control, which are of relevance at a farming level; they do not have any safety implications. From that point, certainly industry, through the umbrella group SCIMAC, developed a code of practice and a set of guidelines for managing these crops on the farm. I think that gave rise to a concept of managed development of the technology in terms of its commercialisation. I do not think at any stage, post-1997, there was a question of a free-for-all or a rush to market. This was a question of looking at guidelines and how the technology could be managed. Industry took the lead, through SCIMAC, in acknowledging that there was a need to respond to the question of choice, both in terms of choice for the farmers to access different forms of production, be it GK, or conventional, or organic, and choice for consumers too. Certainly that underpinned of the development of the guidelines with the objective of best agricultural practice in the agronomic sense and co-existence between GM and non-GM crops in the context of choice. The issue of managed, step-wise progress towards commercialisation was an issue well before any concerns around biodiversity raised by English Nature.

Q363 David Wright: I am interested in that last response because one of the problems that we seem to have uncovered throughout this inquiry is that there has not been enough comparator evidence with organic farming. It is all very well Dr Merritt suggesting that GM crops have been compared with conventional crops extensively. I think one of the problems you have presentationally, and also technically, is that there is not enough understanding about comparing GM crops with organic growing. What is your reaction to that? You seem to be indicating that that was considered in your initial work in 1997?

Mr Pearsall: I have to draw a distinction here between biodiversity considerations, which I think are what you are referring to, and these agricultural issues. The guidelines that were developed by SCIMAC were not in any way designed to further or promote diversity specifically; they were about delivering good agricultural practice. In relation to the question of different farming systems, the background again to the farm scale evaluations lay in a consultation in late 1998, issued again by the UK Government, into the cause for a moratorium: were there any grounds for the cause for a moratorium? Clearly, there were different viewpoints put forward, but the overriding conclusion of that consultation was that there was precious little data about the ecological impact of conventional agriculture generally, let alone the impact of new types of herbicide-tolerant crops developed using genetic modification; hence, the rationale for a comparison between conventional and GM technology. In relation to the crops involved in the FSEs, I think the scale of cropping under organic systems of those particular crop species is very limited. Sugar beet and oil seed rape particularly are not commonly grown in the UK under organic systems.

Dr Turner: There was another problem as well. It may sound facetious but the organic rules said: keep three miles distance between the GM crop and its organic counterpart. It would be very difficult to do a valid scientific comparison if you have one plot in Suffolk and another one in Norfolk.

Chairman: That does sound, if I may say so, a little facetious.

Q364 Mr Thomas: We are obviously looking, as a Committee, at trying to understand exactly how these trials came about, the reasons for them and their impact now on the results that we have been seeing. I think it would be fair to say that the public at least, if they know anything about these trials at all, saw them as a sort of quid pro quo with the industry, that there was going to be a moratorium on commercial GM crops in this country while the trials went on looking into the impact of such GM crops and the herbicide regime that went with them. Could I start with Dr Turner from SCIMAC: would you agree that this was a moratorium in that sense?

Dr Turner: I do not think so. I think we saw it more as a breathing space. I spoke earlier about the regulatory process slowing down. I think we felt that, if there was going to be this breathing space, there was an opportunity to do something positive within that breathing space. The questions raised about seed impact on biodiversity, et cetera, sounded like a very good idea, to fill that apparent blank spot.

Q365 Mr Thomas: Could I ask the companies if they agree with that? Do you think this was a de facto moratorium?

Dr Rylott: No, not at all. It was very clear from the start of the discussions, as Daniel Pearsall mentioned earlier, from these original consultations, that on the horizon was the advent of 2001/18. What we saw here were four crops that were already through the regulations and therefore would not be backdated to come under the 2001/18. They would come under the 2001/18 when they were renewed in 2006/2007 on that sort of basis. It was very clear, from discussions with the UK Government, that they saw that this was not necessarily the most helpful approach and that they wanted to regulate in advance of the 2001/18 coming into place on 17 October, 2002 and that the UK would look at everything as if 2001/18 had come into place. Therefore, there was a need to look at indirect effects, for example. Clearly there were two opinions on what the indirect effects would be from the growing of GMHT crops. One view was that adopted by some of the environmental groups and English Nature, that it would stimulate this sort of green concrete approach; there would be no weeds in the crops, therefore there would be less biodiversity and less food for birds. The other approach was that coming from industry, and that was very clearly taken from work that Colin Merritt referred to earlier at such places as Broom= s Barn but also from our commercial experiences around the world, that said: actually these crops can be grown in a much more flexible way and can improve the biodiversity in the areas in which they are being grown. There was this dichotomy and there was a need to take it forward on a sensible, case-by-case basis. The farm scale evaluations were seen to be answering the question. Clearly, I think everyone would agree there was not UK-specific, truly independent data that everybody could look at, and also it was addressing the situation about this regulatory gap between 220 and 2001/18. We never saw it as a de facto moratorium. The other point that needs to be stressed here as well is that we were very clear with Government at that time, and it came all around the voluntary agreement there was with Government, that it was not a de facto moratorium, and in fact all of the regulatory clearances, such as National Listing and herbicide clearances and whatever, could continue during this period of the farm scale evaluations. It was not a close-down of the progress of regulation at all.

Q366 Mr Thomas: I am sure that later on the Committee will come to the results of the trials and how we interpret those results. Just focusing at the moment on what you are saying, that the agreement with Government was more, as Mr Pearsall referred to earlier, about this programme of managed change, if you like, within the environment, again to Dr Merritt and Dr Rylott: now that we have had the field scale evaluations, moratorium or not as the public may have seen it, are you now intending to go ahead with the introduction of either of these crops or any other crops through the regulatory process within the United Kingdom? Do you now see the field clear? Your agreement with the Government to withhold a little bit, if you like, while you look at the field scale evaluations is now over; we have the results of the evaluations and we await the final results of the winter soya coming out next year. Do you now see your way clear to move forward with this technology?

Dr Rylott: The first thing to say, in answer, is that, following on from the farm scale evaluations but also from the whole of the GM debate that we had this year, what we now have is even more evidence that there is absolutely no case whatsoever to be banning GM crops. We are looking forward to the case-by-case, scientifically-based, regulatory clearances to allow choice to go ahead. We will be taking the crops forward on an economic, case-by-case, scientific basis as soon as possible.

Q367 Mr Thomas: Do you agree that these farm scale evaluations give that evidence for all three crops that were tested?

Dr Rylott: Yes.

Q368 Mr Thomas: You do not see any reason not to go ahead with any of these crops on the basis of these results and their effect on biodiversity?

Dr Rylott: No.

Q369 Mr Thomas: Do you agree with that, Dr Merritt?

Dr Merritt: I think that if you look at the scientific papers, which we have now had a chance to do in detail, and you compare that to a number of other pieces of work, if all the information is put together, then we are faced with a situation of some choices to be made maybe and some further discussions. If all the right parties are able to take part in that process and the regulatory system is finally working again, I certainly think a balanced judgment would conclude that there are ways in which to introduce these crops for the benefit of farming and the environment right now.

Q370 Mr Thomas: Could anyone from SCIMAC make a prediction as to when we will see commercial GM crops grown in this country?

Dr Merritt: We never like to predict regulatory outcomes, I am afraid. We have learnt that.

Q371 Mr Thomas: But you do see it as only being a question of regulatory outcomes, is that right?

Dr Merritt: I think regulatory decisions must be the primary driver of this, but obviously clearly within Europe and in the UK politics plays a very strong part in it as well.

Mr Pearsall: I think we would recognise the fact that there will not be such a thing as an unconditional consent or an unconditional route to market. That is now enshrined in the new Deliberate Release Directive requiring management measures like post-market monitoring. Any consent to market will inevitably be linked to conditions. Besides those specific regulatory requirements, certainly within SCIMAC we are acutely aware of the need to develop arrangements which will allow coexistence and choice. That ultimately is our objective.

Q372 Mr Thomas: Is it fair to say that you are keen to get back on this programme of management development now. The field scale evaluations were not a hiatus but time out, if you like B that is a better way of putting it than a moratorium perhaps B and you are keen to crack on with that?

Dr Merritt: Yes.

Mr Pearsall: It is worth pointing out that the two issues that we have referred to, the agronomic questions raised in the consultation in July 1997 and the questions over wider indirect effects, would, in the normal run of things, in normal commercial agriculture, be addressed post-commercialisation. We have had 30 years to develop low input systems, such as ICN. A complete halt to commercial activity in agriculture was not required to develop and refine those kinds of management systems. We would look at the farm scale evaluations as an investigation of a particular management option, which we described in our memorandum as a worst case scenario, and point to other research and other experience, which suggests that one of the great advantages of this technology lies in its flexibility. We would see that as the focus of a phased approach to managed introduction, with biodiversity considerations as well as economic considerations for the farmer very firmly in mind.

Q373 Mr Thomas: Finally, may I turn to one particular crop which we have been trying to understand as a committee, and that is beet. I understand, Dr Merritt, that Monsanto originally offered to pay for the FSEs on beet. Is that correct?

Dr Merritt: I do not recall that, no. If I can clarify that perhaps, first of all beet is a co-operative crop between ourselves and other companies which are involved in the seed production. We are actually not involved in the seed production of beet. In particular, in the UK it was Sygenta at the beginning of that; they have changed hands during that time but it was originally Avantis Seeds before Sygenta. Because at that stage Government had already seen the regulatory programme or dossiers and they dealt with two approvals, as Dr Rylott has explained for the other crops, the beet crops were a little behind that in the regulatory system under the Commission. Fodder beet was in the lead and had actually then, during that first year of discussions, been seen by our competent authority, the Chemicals and Biotechnology Directorate, and they were still I discussion as to whether to include that crop in the programme. That was actually what we called the preliminary year in which some methodology was being established on a small number of trials prior to the full three to four year programme, which started in 2000.

Q374 Mr Thomas: Was beet one of those?

Dr Merritt: At that stage, beet was not one of the crops. As it was only a methodology for the scientists to understand how best to do these trials, to work out the best assessments and statistics between ourselves and Sygenta, we agreed to set up a single trial, which we did fund, to enable that methodology work to be done, or at least some methodology work to be done. Then, by the end of that year, when in fact fodder beet had actually been up for a vote twice, which was then subsequently postponed for various reasons in the European Commission, at least by that stage it was much more clear to Government that beet was very close to the situation that the other crops were in. They then decided that, yes, after all, they would like to include the beet crop.

Q375 Mr Thomas: Can I ask Dr Turner from the SCIMAC perspective, because we have heard about the relationship with the Government on beet. SCIMAC itself had to take beet on board at some stage. How did that happen? Was it the company that approached you? Was it Government that said that you had to look at this? Can you explain to us how that came about?

Dr Turner: It was much more a consultative approach. No one wanted beet left out and then three years later commercially it would be slowed right down. I think it was a whole series of interactions between SCIMAC, the individual companies and Government as to which was the best way forward that met all the legal approvals and all the scientific criteria as well.

Q376 Mr Thomas: There was no concern there that beet was not quite ready for such a field scale evaluation?

Dr Rylott: No. In fact, if you go back right to the instigation of SCIMAC and the original codes of practice and guidelines that were ratified by Government at the end of 1998, there were clear guidelines for all the crops that were involved in farm scale evaluations, and so we saw the commercial introduction of all the crops coming at about the same time. It was clear to the industry group that they needed to be taken together so that you had guidelines for growing sugar beet, maize and oil seed rape.

Q377 Chairman: Before moving on from that very interesting series of questions, it would be pertinent to suggest to you that your confidence that the farm trial evaluations showed that there was no problem whatsoever about the commercial development of some of these crops is highly contentious. But, if you were to go ahead, where would those seeds come from? Presumably they would have to be imported, would they?

Dr Merritt: It varies from crop to crop.

Q378 Chairman: Do they exist within the United Kingdom in sufficient quantity for commercial operations?

Dr Merritt: Most of those crops are not actually involved in seed production in the United Kingdom. Sugar beet seed production is predominantly either in Scandinavia, southern France or the United States. Maize and rape seed you can explain. Rape seed you can scale up fairly quickly.

Dr Rylott: Obviously rape seed can be grown in the UK quite successfully. You cannot grow forage maize seed in the UK because of the climate. It is produced in Hungary, Chile and places like that.

Q379 Mrs Clark: Can I take us on to a different topic in terms of farmers and the actual provision of sites? I would like to start by addressing SCIMAC. I had understood that you actually did come up with a list for the SCC of farmers who were willing to co-operate in trials and the SCC then went on and provided that to the research consortium. It has been noted, and correct me if I am wrong, that the farmers who actually self-selected and put themselves forward were on board anyway, that they were pro-GM, and therefore, shall we say, rather more positive friends to the industry than others might have been. I would like to ask SCIMAC what the specific criteria were for the sites that you passed on to the consortium and the SSC. Was it in fact just simply that farmers were on board and were willing to co-operate and had grown the conventional varieties involved before? Was it anything more definite than that?

Dr Turner: You have some misconceptions in that. We have a network of contacts because we all work in agriculture but it was not a pre-selection that they were pro the technology. In fact, many came in with a neutral view and subsequently, if you like, have become converted, having seen the crops in action. In many cases one of the key criteria was that they had actually grown the crop before. Some farmers said, A Yes, I would like to have a bash at crop X@ , and we said, A No, you do not actually grow that on your land. You are not familiar with it and so there is no point in you coming into that@ . We then used a range of networks through the NFU Maize Growers= Association, our own contacts with seed producers, et cetera, to produce that list. That was then subsequently offered on to the scientific consortium to make their pick from within it, using their technical and scientific criteria.

Q380 Mrs Clark: You have said I have come up with a list of misconceptions. Do you not think that these misconceptions have been very much in the public arena? Other groups that we have interviewed have actually come out and said this as if it is fact, so naturally we assumed it was. Would it not have been better if you had been completely transparent and had published a list of criteria and made sure that you put that out in the media so that you could not be misrepresented?

Dr Rylott: We did that to some extent. This is one of the difficulties that has always existed in the last three or four years, as you have suggested; a number of misrepresentations have continued in the media. For example, at one period of time we placed an advertorial, as you might call it, in the Farmers= Weekly asking if farmers would like to take part in the farm scale evaluations. It was very clear from that what the conditions were, that they had to have grown the crop before and that, once they had volunteered and we were sure that they fitted the criterion that they had grown the crop before, we could then put them forward to the scientists and then to the Scientific Steering Committee, which chose from that basket of volunteers. It was always very clear, if anyone ever asked us what the criteria for that was, and we would very openly tell them. I reiterate what has been said, that on going round and speaking to these farmers in the first instance to see if they were willing to put up with some of the intimidation B and as a company we did check that B an awful lot of them were very sceptical of the technology; they were definitely not all pro-GM farmers. A number of them had very serious concerns about GM themselves but felt that they wanted to see it for themselves rather than make their decisions from what they had read in the papers. This gave them the opportunity to do so.

Q381 Mrs Clark: If I can press you slightly more on that, do you not think you might have had a better press if you had been up-front to the media and said, A We put out this advert. We have asked people and quite a few are quite sceptical about it@ ? It seems to me that what you have done, in terms of the media, is to be reactive. As you said yourself, if asked the question, you were prepared to say that perhaps it would have been better to have been more proactive.

Dr Rylott: That makes perfect sense.

Q382 Mrs Clark: I now ask Monsanto and Bayer, and Monsanto specifically May I tell the Committee that I spent an informative day with Monsanto, which is near to my constituency in Peterborough, some months ago, so I have particular ideas myself. What particular proportion of farmers per crop put forward by you were used in the eventuality? For example, were there any suggestions from the SSC, or indeed the research consortium, that those who did come forward were not sufficiently representative in the way that they should have been, either from a geographical point of view or indeed any other? Again, it sounds as though you did have problems in finding farmers in any particular area, or indeed for any particular crop. Obviously I am interested in Cambridgeshire from this point of view. Were you encouraged to seek out sites that were perhaps less intensively managed? I am interested in the role of the NFU here because, as you will be aware, we did interview the NFU recently. Sadly, that had to be a rather truncated session, but I think we are planning to put a note to them with our other questions. Did the NFU do all this work themselves or did Bayer and Monsanto play a collaborative part in that?

Dr Merritt: The NFU did help but we ourselves did the donkey work of going round and making the first face-to-face calls with farmers. The reasons for that is of course that first we had to make them aware of some of the implications of doing the trials, as Paul Rylott has already said. One of the things we wanted to make sure farmers were aware of was the potential interest by the media in them and the invasion into their lives, the potential for intimidation. Therefore, we did not want people to go into this and then drop out in large numbers. That was quite important.

Q383 Mrs Clark: That interests me because I had formed again the misguided impression perhaps that the NFU had been in the driving seat. It seems to me now, from what you have said, that they were just maintaining a sort of hands-off watching brief.

Dr Merritt: They did a lot of work to spread the word about asking people to volunteer. Let us be absolutely clear: all farmers volunteered in the end to do this work. It would be nice to say that we could pick out the people we really wanted purely on a statistical basis and command them to do trials, but I do not think that was realistic. There had to be a degree of self-selection. The Scientific Steering Committee, which was given full charge to determine this programme, wanted the process to be statistically based rather than there to be no choice B in other words, whatever we put forward. We were asked every year to provide a larger number, something like 50 per cent more than were actually selected I think it turned out to be, so that there was some selection that was not to do with exactly who we had put forwards. To answer your second point about regions, yes, there was obviously some challenge to get a good coverage of the whole area. If you did the work according to an accurate representation of the proportions in different regions, with this relatively small number compared with tens of thousands of farmers, it would have over-represented the most intensive areas for that crop. Therefore, we were requested to find more farmers in the remoter areas or the less important areas for each of those crops. That challenged us slightly but there was also the ability, in the second and third years, to adjust the balance so that over the three-year period we reached the balance that the Scientific Steering Committee was asking for. It was up to them in the end; they decided, as we understand it, that they were very satisfied that that reflected the balance of the crops around the country.

Q384 Mr Francois: Approximately how many volunteers did you get? How many farmers volunteered B obviously you did not use them all B to participate?

Dr Merritt: As I say, we had approximately 50 per cent more than in the final trials.

Q385 Mr Francois: What was the raw number? How many said they would do it?

Dr Merritt: About 450 agreed, of which 280 were taken up. Here were a lot of repeats. In some cases the Scientific Steering Committee wanted new blood each year, as it were, and in other cases they wanted to gain some experience of how farming practice changed with the second year of experience, so there were some and some.

Q386 Mr Francois: But 500 actually volunteered?

Dr Merritt: That number originally presented to us, yes.

Q387 Chairman: I am still not entirely clear as to the criteria used when selecting down from the 500 odd to the 280. I notice that on the Bayer website, in commenting on the outcome, they say that some of the differences in outcome may be accounted for and A the inclusion of farms operating less intrusive farming practices were favoured in the site selection@ . That was news to me. Was that an important part, in your view, of the choice of farm?

Dr Rylott: If I may return to the process of selecting the farmers and give you the way that we did it at Bayer, obviously, at the end of the day, it was Bayer technology, or Monsanto technology, that was going on to the farms. We have a duty of care to ensure that that is stewarded properly and so we have to have a close relationship with those farmers to ensure compliance with the consent conditions, for example. The NFU, the Maize Growers Association and a number of other farming communities and organisations put out the word, including a commentary in places like the Farmers= Weekly, that there was a need for farmers to volunteer to take part in the farm scale evaluations. We were given some very broad brush strokes of what to look for by the scientists in that, when it came to doing the science, they needed to be able to compare the GMHT crop with a non-GM crop and it was imperative that the farmer had grown the crop before and knew how to grow forage maize or oilseed rape or sugar beet. It also had to be in an area that was typical of where those crops are grown, and so there was no point in putting sugar beet in Aberdeenshire because nobody grows sugar beet in Aberdeenshire. Those sorts of very broad brush strokes or criteria were given to us. Those were the sorts of things that we were able to screen when the farmers phoned in to say that they were interested. We asked, A Have you grown the crop before? Where are you growing it?@ As Colin Merritt has suggested, we then went to see these farmers to check that they actually did have the field, and one or two matters like that, and to ensure that they were comfortable with doing the trial, and also that their families were comfortable about it because it is quite an undertaking. When we were comfortable that they understood the ramifications of doing the trial and they satisfied those original criteria B geography and growing the crop B we then presented those growers= names to the scientists, who then looked at their criteria, which were based on a whole range of other things, as we understand, in terms of farming practices. They would send a questionnaire to the farmer and they would find out, based on things like countryside stewardship schemes, whether that farmer was a member of LEAF and things like whether he was classed as an intensive or less intensive farmer. Then it was down to those scientists to get a representative sample of farming practices and geography to present to the Steering Committee, which rubber-stamped that selection of farmers. We were then able to go to the farmers and organise all the necessary regulatory requirements to facilitate the trials.

Q388 Chairman: So less intensive farming practices were not particularly favoured in the choice?

Dr Merritt: My understanding, having listened to the results presented by the consortium of scientists, is that apparently within the Scientific Steering Committee there was a request that there should be B and I think this came from English Nature B more less-intensive sites. The argument was that for something like a spring crop, if the sites were less-intensive, perhaps those sorts of sites inherently had more weeds than those that were farmed more intensively. It would help to ensure that they saw the differences to a greater extent than if they were all very intensively-farmed sites.

Q389 Chairman: So they were favoured?

Dr Merritt: They were not favoured by ourselves but by the Steering Committee. You would need to check the figures with the scientists.

Q390 Mr Thomas: May I ask one question on that? I am still not clear, therefore, whether you as a company feel that the results of the farm scale evaluations were in any way skewed or biased because of the selection process which you have just outlined? Is it possible to give a yes or no answer to that?

Dr Rylott: I do not think they were. We wondered, in the first instance, when we first heard about there being extra sampling from the less intensive sites, which may not in reality be truly representative of UK agriculture in totality, whether that may have had an effect, but, looking at the results, it would appear that the selection that you see is constant, both from less intensive to more intensive farming systems, so it would appear not to be the case.

Q391 Mr Thomas: When you made your earlier statements to this Committee in answer to questions from me about moving ahead with this programme of managed development, that was on the basis that you believed the results of these farm scale evaluations. You did not have any caveats in that sense with them?

Dr Merritt: It was not in that sense. There are some caveats in terms of the reality of applying a new technology compared to a well-tried and tested one and that is a different issue.

Q392 Mrs Clark: Can we concentrate on the farmers in a slightly different way and look at what they signed up to or otherwise, and obviously by that I mean contracts. We have been given to understand that the contracts were not perhaps as we thought before between SCIMAC and the farmers themselves but between the individual farmers and the individual companies, whether we are talking about Bayer, Monsanto or anybody else. I would like to know whether, before they signed up, you took the time to sit down with them and go through it and say exactly what they are signing up to?

Dr Rylott: Yes.

Q393 Mrs Clark: As a result of that, did you change anything if they objected?

Dr Rylott: No. Can I outline this again? Clearly, once the farmers had been selected by the scientists, they then called us and said, A We now have the following list of 20 farmers that we would like to take part in the trials@ . We then visited each of those 20 farms to be able to sit down and chat to the farmer about what the implications of doing the trials were and to make sure that he or she understood what it was that they had to do in terms of the protocol of the trials and the regulations surrounding the release of GM varieties, et cetera. Once they understood all of that, we then signed a contract. The reason that we have a contract again is very clear. In the first instance, in order for a farmer to be able to claim area aid, the variety normally already has National Listing and is an eligible variety, as it is called. Clearly, these varieties had not got National Listing because they had not gone through that system. In order for the farmers to be able to claim area aid, they must have a contract so that they can demonstrate to DEFRA that it is a research trial that they are carrying out. They are then eligible to claim the area aid. There is a physical and economic need for there to be a contract. Those contracts then clearly laid out what the terms of recompense were to that particular farmer, explained what the seed supply was and what the consent conditions were in terms of what he was allowed and what he was not allowed to do within the regulations, both for the GM and for herbicide use on those crops.

Q394 Mrs Clark: Is there anything else that you have not told us that was an integral part of the contract?

Dr Rylott: No.

Dr Merritt: I suspect our contracts were slightly different between the companies. I can tell you that our contract was not about the management of the trial. I am very clear on that. It was about the supply of seed, i.e. we would supply seed but that any surplus seed, in keeping with our consent conditions, had to be returned to us. It was about compensation for the fact that they would not have a crop growing and therefore would effectively lose income over that land; there was that element. It was about ensuring that the growers would adhere to our consent conditions. We therefore had to provide a very simple guide of the things about which it was essential to comply. Clearly, when there is this number of trials around the country, our consent conditions are absolutely vital. We had to clarify those. It was then also a little commitment from us, in a sense, to provide support to the growers and to make sure that they absolutely knew where and when their commitment started and stopped and what support they would get in the event of things like requirements for communications with their community, that we would give them support and come and join in with meetings. If they had problems dealing with any intimidation or legal issues, we committed to give them some support. It was not to do with the actual trials programmes themselves.

Q395 Mrs Clark: In terms of the actual seeds and herbicides, am I correct in thinking that your two companies provided these and not SCIMAC?

Dr Rylott: It had to come from the companies.

Q396 Mrs Clark: Turning to Friends of the Earth, and I do not know whether they are your best friends or not, they have claimed to the Committee in their evidence that you influenced the size of the field use in the trials and that this was not a decision, as perhaps might be expected, of the independent experts but of the industry itself. Are they right or wrong?

Dr Rylott: In the instance of Bayer products, absolutely wrong.

Q397 Mrs Clark: That is a definite no?

Dr Rylott: They are absolutely wrong.

Dr Merritt: If you mean an influence on the size of the trials, in the case of the sugar beet crop, in the discussion in the methodology year, we made it clear. We were in a situation here of crop destruction because the crops had not been improved and therefore the harvested crop has to be disposed of. Because of the sheer size of the problem of the destruction of sugar beet, which produces 60 to 80 tonnes of material per hectare, we therefore built in a large plot size, which went up to about two hectares, sometimes three or four, rather than having the endless, enormous fields that you sometimes get in East Anglia. It was a requirement of that methodology year for the scientists to assess and convince themselves that the biodiversity measurements that they were going to take, which went basically from the field margins to about 30 metres into fields, was representative. It was their decision that that size was acceptable; it was not our decision.

Mrs Clark: But they say that you did provide them, in terms of the particular crop, with the evidence for them to make their decision.

Q398 Chairman: The question was, did you influence the decision about the size of the fields, and the answer must be yes.

Dr Merritt: We influenced it in the sense that we explained the practical difficulties of dealing with that kind of crop.

Q399 Chairman: So the answer is yes.

Dr Merritt: In advance of the programme, but it was the scientific consortium and the steering committee which decided that that protocol was appropriate.

Chairman: We know they took the decision.

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 B 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 B 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= s 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 B if necessary in confidence B 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.

Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.

Q405 Gregory Barker: If I can just refer to the SCIMAC memorandum, briefly, in that it said B and I quote A Both the GM Inspectorate and ADAS Y 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 made 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 a 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 B 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 A the relevance of that study Y [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 GM 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 B 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 glyfosade (?) 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 per cent 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 per cent 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 A 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 B 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 A 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 B stewardship B 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 ----

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= s 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 B ie, he just does that as part of his job B or is part of another company such as Dalgetty or Mastock 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 and Mark Avery, 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 on 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 A 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 B particularly from the beginning of the season through to at least the middle of the summer through to the end of July B 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 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 B which is a wholly inappropriate protocol to measure yield B 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 per cent to GDP. The amount of land that agriculture is using is about 70 per cent of the total landmass. What would have been economically insignificant could be environmentally enormous.

Dr Merritt: I am glad you put that very comment 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 per cent of our land is farmed, three-quarters of it is actually upland pasture and is not arable crop. Within the arable cropped area, which is, as I say, only 25 per cent 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 B if you like, un-led consumer opinion B 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 B 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 nil hypothesis of looking at changes in crop management B 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= s 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 A 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): A Is there a positive or negative effect from changes in crop management?@ B and I stress it is changes in crop management, not GM B and A 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: A 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= s 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 A 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= s 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 A This is good for you@ or A 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 B the ones I referred to earlier B and they were saying that the trials were not of sufficient standard because they were not comparing the same things B 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 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: A If I was given the opportunity to grow these crops I would not grow them how I grew them in the trial@ he said, A 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 A harm@ as opposed to A impact@ .

Dr Merritt: To take one example, it was quite clear, if you look at the results on bees B just to take one example B 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 per cent. 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= s 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.