Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300
- 314)
TUESDAY 2 JUNE 2009
Ms Sue Davies, Professor Vyvyan Howard and Ms Georgia
Miller
Q300 Lord Cunningham of Felling:
What about consumers being put off if it became a sort of black
list?
Ms Davies: We do not think that would be the
case. The danger is more in not being open about what is happening
in relation to nanotechnologies. We conducted a citizens' panel
at the end of 2007 where we wanted to get a sense of what consumers
thought about the use of nanotechnologies, not just in the food
area but also in relation to medicines and cosmetics and other
consumer products. People were not against it, if anything they
were surprised it was happening because nobody had heard about
nanotechnologies at all before they came along to the citizens'
panel. Some people were obviously more excited than others but
people were interested in it and felt that you should be open
about it. I think the danger is that if you are not open about
it at this early stage people will wonder why we have been hiding
something and then think there is something suspicious going on.
Q301 Lord Cunningham of Felling:
Professor Howard?
Professor Howard: I agree.
Q302 Lord Cunningham of Felling:
What about Georgia?
Ms Miller: We also support a mandatory register.
I do agree with Sue that the information required for something
like that should not be too burdensome but at the same time we
need to make sure that we have information that actually enables
us to compare apples with apples. For example, it is not much
good if someone just says that they are using nano-titanium dioxide
and we do not know what shape, what size, what surface coating.
We need to make sure that it is sufficiently detailed and enables
rapid comparison of different known materials in use. However,
I would just say this, if you are concerned about the public concern
about the use of certain nanomaterials in food to be such that
it did serve as a black list, I do not think that is a reason
not to pursue this initiative. I think one of the things that
comes through really clearly in the early public engagement around
nanotechnology is that this is the most sensitive area of nanotechnology
application. People feel strongly about food and should people,
particularly given the early warning signs of risk and the huge
safety gaps, choose not to buy food that contains manufactured
nanomaterials then I would say that is their right and that is
something that the government should reassure them on. That it
will enable them to exercise that right because, as Sue said,
I think the worse thing that could happen at the moment is that
people feel they do not have access to relevant information and
that is a cause for future concern.
Q303 Lord Cunningham of Felling:
What are the implications then of having such a mandatory register
in one country but not in others?
Ms Miller: I would suggest that countries everywhere
at the moment are actually looking at these issues. For example,
Canada has already announced a mandatory register of all companies
who used a kilo or more of nanomaterials last year; they will
have to provide information on the nanomaterials but also on the
safety data they have. France has announced its intention to do
something similar. There are calls in Australia from the unions
for mandatory notification to workers. This is something that
countries around the world are having to deal with right now.
I do note in the recent proposals from the European Parliament
they are suggesting that nanomaterials should not be permitted
in foods without mandatory labelling on the product. That is something
that we would support too.
Q304 Chairman:
Can I just ask a mini-supplementary to that to you, Georgia, since
you have a good knowledge of the international situation. What
is going on in China?
Ms Miller: That is a good question because of
course people have very limited information about what is going
on in China and I would suggest that we have very limited information
about what is going on in many parts of the world. I think there
are serious language gaps and I also think there are serious deficiencies
in governments relying so heavily on the OECD as the primary vehicle
for communication about risk research and policy responses because
a lot of the world is not represented in OECD and a lot of the
OECD's communication is happening exclusively in English. I think
we are faced with some very serious challenges.
Q305 Lord Methuen:
You have all mentioned in your evidence the need to take into
account the public and society's interests and views when considering
the future of nanotechnologies in the food sector. I think we
all want to avoid a situation like the GM food fiasco. Could you
expand on what you think these views and interests might be, and
what government mechanisms should be considered as part of any
approval process?
Ms Davies: I think that the interests are quite
broad ranging and it is really going to depend on the particular
applications, so it kind of comes back again to the point about
getting a clearer understanding of what is happening now and what
we could be seeing over the next few years as well in order to
have a proper understanding of what the issues are that could
be raised. The obvious concern is about safety and making sure
that products are not coming onto the market that could raise
unacceptable levels of risk. There are issues around the sorts
of claims that products are making and making sure that consumers
can have confidence in them and that they are not mislead. For
some products it may be that they will raise broader ethical concerns
that people may have concerns about and may want to avoid for
those reasons, but it is very difficult at the moment in these
early stages to understand exactly what the breadth of concerns
could be. We think it is important to engage with the public at
this early stage but to try to actually talk about the potential
applications that could be coming along to get a sense of how
people would react to them. Ultimately I think you need to have
much clearer information in order to actually look at it on a
more specific basis in order to understand what kind of issues
are going to be raised for consumers.
Professor Howard: Certainly from discussions
with people who are in the industry, they definitely want to avoid
a GMO type scenario so they want to engage stakeholders. I would
say that transparency at all levels is the best way forward and
I think that is why I and the Soil Association would support mandatory
labelling of products as well as this register so that everybody
knows what is going on and awareness will be raised through that.
Ms Miller: I think that the report from the
UK Nanotechnology Engagement Group is worth a look; it is quite
extensive but well indexed. It was published in 2007 after a couple
of years of public engagement on nanotechnologies in the UK. Their
key findings were that people were concerned about three key areas
which were uncertainty and regulation and, in particular, whether
or not regulation could deal with uncertainty and keep pace with
risk management; the distribution of benefits and risks; and the
question of public involvement. They made the point that these
are issues that were also of concern during the GM controversy
and I would suggest in relation to food a key question is: do
we need nano in food? Why should the public accept any new risk
at all when a lot of the applications are to improve the aesthetic
properties of food or the flow properties of ketchup or to extend
the shelf life of food which might be very useful for the food
distributor or the food retailer but perhaps be of little use
for the consumer? Why should the public accept new risks? I think
these are three key areas that will be of concern to the public
and I think perhaps the most challenging is the question of involving
the public in decision making about nanotechnology in this very
sensitive area. I think that is quite essential.
Q306 Lord Haskel:
Could I just ask Professor Howard, obviously an important part
of public engagement is the way all these trials and tests that
you have been urging us to carry out are carried out. For instance,
are they going to be done on humans or are they going to be done
on animals? How is it going to be done? Do you think this is an
important part of public engagement? How do you think we tackle
that?
Professor Howard: We are not allowed to experiment
on humans. The work we are going to do on Alzheimer's, for example,
is in a mouse which has got a human Alzheimer gene in it—it
is a well-characterised progress of that disease—and we
are going to see if we can perturbate the progress of that disease
by challenging it with various nanoparticles. That is the basis
of the Neuro Nano EU project. When we have finished these studies
they will be published in peer review journals and then after
that hopefully, if they show anything, will become adopted in
policy. That is a problem, in that policy obviously has to lag
behind scientific knowledge. The most difficult step in a risk
assessment is hazard identification. I can remember a number of
us saying four or five years ago, "Well, with nanotubes they
might have an asbestos-like activity" and other people said
that that was just a theoretical thing, there was no evidence
of that. Now we have two papers which give an indication that
there might be a grain of truth in that. With these long term
degenerative diseases—the protein misfolding diseases—we
have the knowledge to say that that could be biologically plausible.
We need to investigate it and assess it I think before we start
dosing people. That is my feeling. I think all these things will
feed into that risk assessment eventually.
Q307 Earl of Selborne:
I would like to continue this theme about public engagement. I
would like to ask you all how you structure this public engagement
dialogue. Clearly in the absence of concrete examples of nano
food products the debate has to be at a fairly fundamental level.
How do you engage the public in what many of us would see as a
rather hypothetical exercise? Does the government have a role?
Does industry lead? What role should consumer associations play?
Perhaps Georgia could give us her views first on how you structure
such a public engagement dialogue.
Ms Miller: The first thing I would say is that
before talking about how one does effective public dialogue (which
is usually the focus of discussions in the social science literature
and elsewhere), I think the primary question to ask is why. Unless
the government is in a situation where it is prepared to really
commit to taking on board findings, not to being led by them but
certainly being informed by them and really committing to integrate
the outcomes of public dialogue in its own process of policy development,
then I would suggest that public engagement is actually of little
value. I think that key question must be answered first: why?
What are the objectives and what are the constraints and to be
really clear about that. Secondly I would suggest there is an
effective role for stakeholders such as consumers' advocacy organisations
and other groups. I would suggest that there should be a broad
range of community as well as industry, research and government
stakeholders involved in dialogue together, but I do think that
ultimately you need to hear what the general public think. There
are a number of different ways that you can use deliberative models
to actually resource random groups representing members of the
public to consider various issues and I am sure you have all encountered
different forms of consensus conferences or citizens' juries or
what have you, but I would suggest that what you actually need
is an oversight group which comprises stakeholders and government
members and public participation practitioners to sit down once
you have worked out what the goal of the objective is and to develop
a programme that contains a variety of activities that has a discrete
start and end point and it gives you some basis on which to start.
I think that would be quite useful.
Q308 Baroness Neuberger:
Can I just follow that up with Georgia because I thought that
was really interesting. You are saying that if government is not
prepared to take what comes out of such public engagement seriously
there probably is not a lot of point in doing it. If I were to
suggest to you that even if government were not that interested
maybe manufacturers and consumer groups would be, then would it
not be worth doing even if government were not going to incorporate
it into policy but maybe consumer groups and manufacturers would
and maybe that has a value in itself?
Ms Miller: I think it is certainly true to observe
that of the many public dialogue activities which have been carried
out to date and which have not resulted in any observable change
to government policy, they have nonetheless had a value. I think
that is certainly true and it is important to say that they have
helped add to our understanding of what members of the public
think about these issues, they have certainly been valuable for
the groups who participated. However, I guess my point is really
that for the government to back a public dialogue programme on
this issue it would be of limited use if it is not seen to be
genuine, so to have a genuine commitment to a two-way dialogue
not just to, in a sense, engage for the sake of engaging without
actually wanting to hear.
Q309 Chairman:
Sue, would you like to add anything?
Ms Davies: I would agree with a lot of what
Georgia has said and I think there has been a tendency with some
of the public engagement that has been done in this area to do
it in a very general sense so far and then kind of question the
value of it saying, "Well, the public said what they always
say about new technologies and it has not really taken us any
further forward". I think it is important that you use deliberative
techniques and it is as grounded in the potential applications
as much as possible, and that there is a commitment to enabling
it to feed into policy. It is also important to think about at
what stage it actually happens as well and I think a crucial stage
is looking at the type of research that is underway at the moment
and what the focus of that should be, and understand what the
public's views are. There are some interesting examples from the
nano-medicine area, for example, where there was a citizens' panel
that was held by the EPSRC (the Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council) which directly fed into their decisions about
what research to fund in this area. I think there is a role for
public engagement at that kind of stage, but then there also needs
to be government-funded research to understand what the public
think more specifically in relation to nano-foods. When we did
our citizens' panel—obviously there are limitations on what
you can do—we found it very helpful to have people coming
in and talking from different research associations. We had Vic
Morris (who I think has given evidence) and Qasim Chaudhry come
and talk about the potential applications and the regulations.
It is very interesting how, over three days, the people who had
no knowledge and potentially no interest in nanotechnologies at
the start of the process became really, really engaged in it and
by the end had developed quite sophisticated views on what they
thought should be happening and what kind of regulations should
be in place.
Q310 Chairman:
Could I just come back to you, Sue, on the point that Georgia
made as to why one would want to start a public engagement exercise.
Georgia made the point that if government is not going to take
any notice of it there is no point in them initiating it, which
then Baroness Neuberger put a slightly different slant on. If
the government were going to take notice of public engagement,
what would that notice consist of? Would it be to ban foods that
the public were suspicious of? Or would it be to place public
opinion ahead of science? What would the role be?
Ms Davies: I think at this early stage where
the debate is about what type of regulation we should have in
place, it is to make sure that there is scope to deal with those
concerns within the regulation. We talked about the Novel Foods
regulation and one of the amendments that was adopted by the European
Parliament was that you should have to take into account other
legitimate factors, which is obviously a very vague term. As well
as the scientific risk assessment there should be this scope within
the regulation. If something appears to present very little risk
but maybe raises some fundamental ethical concerns, then you have
the scope within the regulations to say in certain cases that
it is not appropriate to put that onto the market. It is partly
about the regulation and it is partly about understanding how
far that needs to go in terms of the type of information consumers
want about nanotechnology development, but also in terms of shaping
the research agenda that government is funding as well as just
generally setting out a broader strategy for the way that nanotechnologies
should evolve. There are obviously a lot of risks that need to
be tackled but there are potential benefits and you need to make
sure that it is taken forward in a way that ensures society in
general benefits. That is also the purpose of public engagement.
I would also agree with the points that were made about industry's
role in this. Lord Selborne will know from the development of
the Responsible NanoCode that one of the things that was proposed
in that context was that industry should have some responsibility
for doing some kind of public engagement as it develops products
as well. I think one of the lessons from GM—you always have
to be careful about comparing this to GM because it is obviously
so very different—is that there was a real failure by the
people who were developing the technology at the start of the
food chain to properly appreciate the issues that were going to
be raised at the end of the supply chain when products went on
sale and what supermarkets' approaches would be to it as well.
I think it is important to try to make sure that the people right
at the very start of the food chain are actually understanding
what kind of implications and what kind of expectations consumers
may have, whether that is about product labelling or whether it
is about the types of claims that are made as well.
Q311 Lord Mitchell:
Several organisations, in particular Which?, have suggested that
there is a lack of awareness by the general public with respect
to nanotechnologies, I think not surprisingly. I think all of
you in your evidence have said in your evidence that products
should have labels which talk about the inclusion of nanoparticles
in food. I ask the question, given the plethora of information
that is already on many food products, whether this is such a
good idea.
Ms Davies: I think it is a very difficult issue
and it is very difficult while people know very little about the
technology. We did a survey in November last year and 45 per cent
of people said that they had heard of nanotechnologies—this
was a representative sample of the UK—but when we actually
asked them about what it meant very few people really understood
what it was. I think there is the issue that any labelling has
to be provided in the broader context of the need to provide more
information to the public about what nanotechnologies are. It
is something we asked when we did our citizens' panel just to
try to get a sense of what people thought about it and the people
who had been exposed to all this information about nanotechnologies
for three days said that they definitely thought that they should
know whether something was produced using nanotechnology, not
for safety reasons (because they thought safety should be a given
and you should sort out the regulatory processes and make sure
you could do proper risk assessments) but because they thought
it was a new development and it was something they would want
to know about. They recognised that if we had asked them that
on the Thursday before they had come for the weekend and had all
this information it would not really have meant very much to them
at all. On balance it is important in terms of transparency and
it is also important in terms of having traceability not just
for the end consumer but also throughout the whole supply chain,
but it does need to be done and backed up with much broader information
so that consumers understand what it means. I think at the moment
we have a bizarre situation—I have brought a product with
me—where you do have products on the market that say they
are nano but there are other products that are produced using
nanotechnology and they are not telling you that they are produced
using nanotechnology so you are going to have an incredibly complicated
situation. The other thing is that, as you probably know, the
cosmetics regulation has recently been reviewed by the EU and
within that there is a requirement that ingredients in cosmetics
will have to say whether they are produced using nanotechnology
or not. If consumers start to become familiar with cosmetic products
stating whether or not the ingredients are nano then it would
seem very bizarre not to give them that kind of information in
relation to food.
Q312 Lord Mitchell:
Do you not think that there is so much information that appears
on things that we buy, then to have that on is a degree of overkill?
Maybe the solution would be to have an internet site that people
could go to to get this information.
Ms Davies: That is often put forward as a solution
for labelling problems. I appreciate there is a lot of information
on the labels and there is a real move to reduce packing size
as well at the moment. However, I think it still excludes an awful
lot of people who are not going to actively go to a website and
a lot of people want the information at the point when they are
making decisions about buying products so I think that means that
it should be on the label. If it is put in the ingredients list
it is not too onerous. At the end of the day people are choosing
to buy a particular product and people are genuinely interested
in knowing what the ingredients are and if there are any new types
of production processes that have been used in that product. I
think it comes back again to getting a clearer picture of exactly
what kind of developments are taking place and maybe further down
the line there will be some applications that people are not particularly
so interested in as others, but I think as a general principle
it is important that consumers can have this kind of information.
Q313 Chairman:
I wonder if Georgia would like to add anything to what has been
said about labelling.
Ms Miller: I think actually that Sue's point
is a really good one, that people may not care so much about labelling
when they have not heard very much about nanotechnology but once
they become familiar with nanotechnology and its applications,
then labelling becomes something that they support quite strongly.
This to me suggests that over the next few years, as public awareness
about nanotechnology grows, so too will support for labelling
and clear mandatory labelling at the point of sale so that people
can make informed purchasing choices. If that is something that
is not supported now, particularly in relation to food, I think
we can expect a backlash from the community later on as public
awareness about nanotechnology grows. I also just wanted to add
something to the previous conversation about the ways in which
public participation can inform decision making around nano because
I actually think there are perhaps four or five key areas. One
is around innovation policy and in a sense we need to think about
both nanotechnology policy and how it relates to other innovation
objectives, and technology and non-technology options to meet
key areas of social and environmental need. The other is around
food and agriculture, what sort of food and agriculture policy
we want to support and whether or not nanotechnology actually
complements or undermines other objectives we might set ourselves,
for example improving the ecological sustainability of agriculture
or reducing food miles or helping improve local food security
and issues like this. The other is around government strategy
and I think that the public should have some opportunity to be
involved in setting the strategy as far as nanotechnology oversight
in the UK and elsewhere. The third area is in research priorities
which is something that we have talked a bit about already and
where the research money should be invested. We must recognise
that, like any technology development, nanotechnology is mutable
and what we get at the end will be partly influenced by what we
put in at the beginning in terms of research focus. The fourth
area is in commercialisation. I am not so familiar with the situation
in the UK but I know certainly in Australia our Government supports
commercialisation of nanotechnology products; it gives grants
to companies to bring to market certain products. This is quite
an influential area of innovation policy but again all of these
areas that I have talked about so far are outside regulation;
they are outside the area that we typically focus all our attention
on. I guess that the point I wanted to make is that we really
need to open up innovation strategy, research priorities and some
of the upstream parts of technology development to public dialogue
and not just focus on regulation because if we do that then in
a sense we have already committed ourselves to a certain path.
Q314 Lord Crickhowell:
Georgia has taken me to the question that I wanted to ask and
I was going to address it probably to Professor Howard. In all
our sessions we come up with three things: do not know, lack of
research (particularly in critical areas like the gut), difficulty
of validation and risk assessment. How do we get the research
focus better? This is a worldwide thing, but clearly the research
focus is not ideally where it should be at the moment.
Professor Howard: I think that the EU and some
of the research councils here in the UK are giving very focused
research grants to look at specific problems. They are to do with
uptake studies, distribution studies and toxicology. That is what
we need. There is quite a large amount of money being devoted
to that. If I could harp back for one second to what was being
said before, I think the very term "nanotechnology"
is a problem for the industry because it does encompass a large
number of enabling technologies going from microscopes to nano-structured
surfaces on self-cleaning glasses, many of which are not in the
slightest bit threatening, but they all come under that heading.
What we are addressing here with food is a specific problem of
increased and inappropriate mobility of substances through the
body. I think that because it is that subset it might be rather
easier than we think to communicate that. That is certainly where
the research is focused at the minute, mobility and toxicology.
Chairman: Thank you very much. I would
like thank all of our witnesses for helping us to explore some
of the issues that we put before you. I would like to confirm
that copies of the transcript will be available for you to comment
on before it is finally published. Also, if there are any points
that you have not been able to elaborate on sufficiently that
you would like to write into us about, please feel free to do
so and those points would also be published along with the rest
of our written evidence and with the transcript. With that I would
like to thank you all very much indeed for joining us, including
Georgia from Australia. Thank you very much, Georgia.
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