Panorama
Frankenstein Foods
Recorded From Transmission BBC 17may99
STEVE BRADSHAW: People are confused about Frankenstein foods. Government advisers insist they are safe, but some scientists are worried. Tonight on Panorama the inside story of the battle to put Frankenstein food on our plates.BRADSHAW: Across Britain the debate about Genetically Modified Organisms in our crops and our food becomes more heated by the day.
The latest battle in the war over genetically modified, or GM, foods could change the very landscape we live in. The traditional British countryside is becoming home to something a little less traditional. Here at Lush Hill Farm in Wiltshire they’re growing a different kind of crop.
Manager, John Messer, is showing Captain Fred Barker how it’s coming along. It looks just like any other plant but it’s not the same. This oil seed rape has had an extra gene added to it which means it won’t die when the field is sprayed with a particular kind of weed killer. But while the rape won’t die, almost all the weeds will. The field is part of a government trial and Captain Barker can see the advantages such a crop may give farmers like him.
Capt. FRED BARKER
We’ve got a major weed problem on this farm and possibly we go over the same piece of five times with ground the sprayer, two times for weeds, maybe three times for weeds. This genetically herbicide tolerant modified crop did seem to me a very good way forward for us from the farming point of view.
BRADSHAW: But not everyone shares his view. Last week Captain Barker met up with some of the locals. Many don’t want the trials. They don’t believe they are safe for the countryside. But Captain Barker hopes to reassure them.
BARKER: I hope I can persuade you to understand that I’m very proud of my farm and I’m very proud of everything we do on it.
BRADSHAW: But many other farmers are concerned about the impact the trials will have on their farms.
PETE RICHARDSON: I’m getting slightly emotional about it because it really does threaten our livelihood this.
BRADSHAW: Pete Richardson has an organic farm a few miles down the road from Captain Barkers fields. He’s worried that pollen carried across from Lush Hill could cause genetic contamination of his crops.
RICHARDSON: The general public are really, really angry about this and I’m angry that as a grower I cannot guarantee in the future to provide organic food for people who want it. I’m not a very big grower but the people who want it, want it, and they want choice, and they are not going to have choice.
AUDIENCE: Here here. (Applause)
RICHARDSON: I think there is an enormous amount at stake here. I think it is the right of every consumer to make an informed choice about what they eat, and also of every farmer and grower to be able to grow organic crops free from genetic contamination.
BARKER: I think we need to test.. I the farmer need to know the answer, you as a consumer need the answer. If we keep it in the laboratory we’ll never know. Some would say that’s where it should stay but I believe we have to make progress.
BRADSHAW: This is not just a local issue. Fears about genetic modification of food have been growing throughout the country, but it’s only recently those fears have been focused on farming. Most of the public protest over the last few months has been about the food we buy, and its supermarkets who have been the main target. Once shopping used to be a simple affair, now you have to be a detective. The latest quest is checking whether food is natural or whether it’s GM, now being called Frankenstein food. Over 60% of grocer’s food may have some form GM ingredient in it, and until recently we didn’t even know. Shoppers are worried.
FEMALE SHOPPER: You don’t know what effect it’s going to have on us do you.. you know.. in the future.
MALE SHOPPER: The government denied all knowledge of BSE and look where we are now.
BRADSHAW: Despite all the debate, most ordinary shoppers still feel in the dark about Genetically Modified foods. But according to some scientists the stakes could hardly be higher.
Dr MICHAEL ANTONIOU
Geneticist, Kings College, London
When it comes to Genetically Modified foods we’re basically conducting the kinds of tests that should be done in a laboratory context, we’re doing it with the public at large.
BRADSHAW: In Stroud in Gloucestershire last February 500 people tried to persuade local shops to clear GM food from their shelves. The Frankenstein food scare had moved the supermarket aisles to the streets. Even the local Labour MP reckoned the government and its advisers had been too quick to side with the multinationals behind the GM industry.
DAVID DREW, MP
The whole GM question is one about these unaccountable invisible forces who seemingly took decisions that there were decisions that people are now seriously questioning and I think that governments have got to sit up and actually reflect what the people say rather than the large companies.
BRADSHAW: The government and most scientists say GM is safe, but a vocal minority of experts disagree and that’s fuelled the protests. Most big supermarket chains have now banned GM from their own products. Tescos were the last to hold out.
CAMPAIGNER: Read it, send it to your head office, get a reply as soon as you can to ensure the people of Stroud that that’s what you're going to do.
MANAGER: Thank you very much.
CAMPAIGNER: Thank you very much.
MANAGER: I’ll be doing exactly what this young man has asked me to do and send this to head office.
BRADSHAW: But it wasn’t until the end of last month that the manager’s bosses finally responded.
DAVID SAWDAY
Spokesman, Tesco
Well I don’t think we’ve been slow to react. I think we’ve been monitoring very carefully what our customers have been telling us. Yes, we have had some pressure groups marching into some stores and saying ‘You, Tesco, ought to be doing this’, but at the end of the day we have to responsible to what our customers want and its our customers that in the last 8 weeks have said.. well 1 in 4 of our customers have said ‘We’d like you to have a GM-free option’. So it’s that reason that in the last few weeks we’ve decided that we will now take GM out of those products where we have it.
BRADSHAW: But that will take a while, and so to help identify alternative suppliers, Tesco have made an extraordinary alliance with a pressure group - Greenpeace.
SAWDAY: We’re no longer on two sides of the fence, you know, throwing bricks at each other if that’s what was happening, but we are co-operating now to provide what customers want.
BRADSHAW: It’s not just the supermarkets who have bowed to public pressure to remove genetically modified ingredients from their shelves. In the last few weeks even the big food manufacturers like Unilever, Nestle and Cadburys have had to bend to meet consumer demands.
TEACHER: Remember I talked to you about different communities, different animal and plant communities and how they all link up in some way.....
BRADSHAW: In schools too, like here in Gloucester, old certainties about food, that it’s natural and safe, are being eroded by the Frankenstein food scare. Most of what kids take in about GM foods comes not from teachers but from the press. Plenty of scope for confusion.
Sam, what do you think of GM foods?
SAM (Schoolboy) Very disturbing actually because a small child could eat them and probably get seriously injured.
BRADSHAW: Why do you think that?
SAM: Because they’ve mixed around with all the chemicals and it could be dangerous.
BRADSHAW: What do you make about all the publicity about Frankenstein foods, does that scare you?
SAM: Yes.
BRADSHAW: Sam may be taking it a bit far but last autumn parents in Gloucestershire were worried enough to ask the council to cut GM foods out of school meals all together. The council hasn’t yet been able to renegotiate its contract with its caterers, but they have agreed on a voluntary policy of not knowingly serving Genetically Modified food to their pupils.
You’ve effectively decided to ban GM foods from Gloucestershire schools. Aren’t you being a bit hysterical?
ROGER CROUCH
Director of Education, Gloucestershire
No I don’t think we are. There was certainly no atmosphere of hysteria at the time the decision was taken. We are essentially responding to parents’ concerns. With school meals, if parents don’t want a particular type of food, the only way we can guarantee that is to take that out.
BRADSHAW: Now the Local Government Association, like the supermarkets and food manufacturers, wants to phase GM foods out. And yet despite all this nation-wide opposition the government still wants to be part of the GM revolution.
Dr JACK CUNNINGHAM,
MP
Minister for the Cabinet Office
We can’t isolate ourselves from a world in which genetically modified crops and genetically modified food products are being produced. The potential for the bio-sciences in this economy, in the British economy, is enormous and it would be foolish for us, for this government to cut ourselves off from that potential.
We’re a world leader in the field.
STEVE BRADSHAW
Despite the government still backing the principle of genetic modification, the public mood remains one of alarm with schools and supermarkets being forced to ban GM foods altogether. But how did we get to this position? After all, the government has whole teams of official advisers to try and make sure the crops and food we eat are safe. Well the answer, our investigation shows, is that throughout the 90s crucial warnings went unheeded, the fears of consumers were overlooked and key issues like whether we really want GM food at all were simply not addressed.
The GM story began here with a tomato devised by a British scientist Donald Grierson. All living organisms have genes written in their DNA, they are the chemical instructions on how to grow and live. By modifying one of the plant’s genes, Grierson produced tomatoes that made a thicker puree, a GM crop that seemed to produce a real benefit.
DONALD GRIERSON: We are studying a whole range of genes that affect the colour, flavour, texture and other quality attributes including the nutritional value, and I think that genetic modification is going to lead to better foods, more flavoursome and more wholesome foods which are better to eat.
BRADSHAW: Grierson’s tomatoes contained a gene taken from another tomato plant that had been altered to make the tomato stay especially firm while they ripened.
Prof. DON GRIERSON
Professor of Plant Sciences, Nottingham University
We were very pleased. The science was done first here and it was great to see it develop into a product which consumers could benefit from. It’s almost the same as the regular variety, just one gene changed in several tens of thousands.
BRADSHAW: The experts who decided a tomato ‘almost the same as normal’ was safe to eat are the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes - The ACNFP. Most are scientists with connections to the food or biotechnology industry. There was just one member to represent consumers. It’s the committee’s job to make sure novel foods don’t contain some novel ingredient that could harm us. After giving the green light to the British tomato, they had to decide if American soya beans were safe, beans with a genetic modification invented by the American company Monsanto.
To judge whether the GM soya beans were safe, the committee relied on a principle known as substantial equivalence. It looked upon Monsanto’s application and decided that genetically modified soya beans were substantially equivalent to natural soya beans, and if the natural soya beans were safe so the GM beans must be too.
But what made the American GM soya a more complex issue than the British tomato was that the added gene had come not from a plant but from a bacterium, and rather than making it taste better, it made the crop resistant to a certain kind of weed killer - Monsanto’s own.
How can you say that GM soya beans are equivalent to non-GM soya beans when they contain a new gene?
Prof. DEREK BURKE
Chairman, Advisory Committee on Novel Foods, 1989-97
GM soya contains one additional gene in about 50,000 soya genes. That gene comes from a common soya bacterium, there is also a very small portion of a gene from the petunia plant. We had to ask ourselves whether the presence of these genes and the protein that the soya bacterium gene made, made any difference to the safety of the product when it is eaten by people. Now we don’t eat soya, we eat the meal, and in making the meal both the DNA and the protein are first of all degraded, and secondly then very quickly broken right down by the gut and the stomach, so as it’s eaten by the person, they are actually completely equivalent.
BRADSHAW: But some scientists, like geneticist Michael Antoniou, disagree. He’s done his own experiments on substantial equivalence.
Dr MICHAEL ANTONIOU
Geneticist, Kings College London
My own research tells me that these foods cannot be equivalent because it does not fully take into account the fact that genetic modification, as applied to agriculture, contains an inherent unpredictable component which means that it can produce new toxins and new allergies. So if you go only looking for the things you know are there, you will, in all likelihood, be missing out on that unknown component that can could cause a problem.
BRADSHAW: Opponents of GM foods, like Doctor Antoniou, say the new foods should be tested far more extensively.
How long did the animal tests you commissioned last?
BURKE: Oh usually months, but I think what...
BRADSHAW: Is that long enough?
BURKE: One or two went over a year.
BRADSHAW: Was that long enough?
BURKE: Yes, I think it was.
BRADSHAW: Long enough to sense anything unpredictable or find out anything.....
BURKE: Yes, we were taking the advice of expert toxicologists who spend their lives looking for abnormal reactions of the human body to things in the diet.
BRADSHAW: Your critics say just not long enough. You should have tested these longer.
BURKE: You could test them for a hundred years if you want to, or a thousand years if you want to. At some point one has to say a reasonable person is satisfied. I thought we were satisfied. If other people don’t, that’s up to them to make their case.
ANTONIOU: This needs to be followed up with feeding trials with human volunteers because something that may come up safe in animals doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be safe for people to eat.
BRADSHAW: Do you think you should have tested these new foods on humans?
BURKE: We knew a great deal about the similarity or difference of these foods from conventional foods and that’s our surest test.
BRADSHAW: But the scientists who wanted long-term animal and human tests have no voice on the Novel Foods Committee. When civil servants and ministers from the last government chose its members, they didn’t include anyone opposed to the principle of GM foods.
Prof. DEREK BURKE
Chairman, Advisory Committee on Novel Foods, 1989-97
My experience is that if you talk to people who are committed to being against it, you don’t make any progress. You exchange views, you talk past each other. But our job was to advise ministers whether these foods were safe or not. We were not asked whether we were in favour of the technology. We were asked whether the foods were safe.
BRADSHAW: Not only did the Novel Foods Committee have a narrow remit, it also had little formal contact with other committees advising the government on GM foods.
HELEN MILLER
Advisory Committee on Novel Foods, 1992-98
I think all the committees felt that there should be some way where they could get together. They got together sometimes on perhaps a limited topic, but they didn’t get together enough and so there were definite gaps.
BRADSHAW: In 1994 the committee, in compliance with its narrow remit, decided the almost natural Monsanto soya beans were safe to put into our food. No critics invited to give evidence, no human trials undertaken. The government took its advice and licensed the GM beans for human consumption. Then something happened that upset almost everyone, even the Novel Foods Committee. In 1994, just as they were clearing GM soya, Monsanto was telling the government by the time it reached Britain it would be mixed up with ordinary soya beans. Since soya is used in half the processed foods we eat, that meant it would be almost impossible to avoid - you wouldn’t know what food it was in. Even members of the committee that had passed it were alarmed.
MILLER: That was absolutely appalling. There was a huge level of frustration, not only from consumers but from manufacturers, from retailers, all of whom joined together to be concerned about the fact that choice had been... gone out of the window in terms of soya. But that was not the remit of the Committee, the Committee just said this is a safe product.
BRADSHAW: Did you ever talk about it privately?
MILLER: Oh yes, of course, I mean absolutely.
BRADSHAW: But not officially?
MILLER: But not officially.
BRADSHAW: And what do you say privately?
MILLER: Well privately we were all very angry indeed, including the scientists.
BRADSHAW: Angry with..?
MILLER: Angry with Monsanto I suppose.
Dr COLIN MERRIT
Technical Director, Monsanto UK
Monsanto It’s the regulatory bodies that approve food safety. They decide whether the food products need to be separated.
BRADSHAW: But you could have insisted that they were kept separate.
MERRIT: Well I don’t think we can. We don’t have an influence on what food manufacturers and suppliers do. We only have an influence at the seed supply end.
BRADSHAW: But you could have told the people who were using the seed, the farmers, keep these separate, plant them separately.
MERRIT: But that’s a decision for the regulators and its based on whether there’s any difference, and if there’s no difference then why should anybody be told to keep separate anymore than we do in any other crops at the moment?
BRADSHAW: Few consumers knew it but behind the scenes a huge row had broken out. During 1995 some supermarkets, like Sainsburys, were contacting suppliers to try and avoid the GM soya. They fought a rearguard action to try and have the GM beans segregated so they could be labelled.
ALISON AUSTIN
Environmental Manager, Sainsbury’s
We petitioned the main American company involved in genetically modified soya which is Monsanto; we petitioned the UK government; we sent information to the American Soya Bean Growers Association; we sent information to the American government, everybody that we could contact. We said we want it segregated so we can provide choice.
BRADSHAW: And what happened?
AUSTIN: Well they listened intently, and we had numerous meetings across a period of 18 months to 2 years, but in the end it appeared that they didn’t listen to what was wanted here in the UK and in Europe because they didn’t segregate.
BRADSHAW: While the row went on, another committee was sitting whose very job it was to decide if foods like GM should be labelled, the Food Advisory Committee. In fact they’d been considering it since 1990. They too are mostly scientific and industry experts with a couple of lay members to represent consumers. In 1993, after holding a formal consultation, the committee concluded that there was not a strong enough case to insist on labelling GM foods.
Sir COLIN CAMPBELL
Food Advisory Committee, 1994 - present
The committee at that time I think felt that it could crowd out other information and if somebody somewhere insisted on labels being on every single product, the labels would become devalued, we’d just stop reading them because there were so many labels about.
BRADSHAW: But didn’t you accept that this is what people wanted to know, whether it was GM or not?
CAMPBELL: I do not recall that at that time people wanted to know that. I think the committee was well ahead of public concerns and looking into GM.
BRADSHAW: Most of those consulted did not recommend labelling. In 1993, in its submission to the FAC, Tesco explained why they thought it would be better if GM ingredients were not spelt out on labels. They said "An unbearable labelling regime would lead to adverse customer perception of the product and could be detrimental to the marketing of safe products." But we’ve learnt that as far back as 1993 credible voices like the National Farmers Union and the British Medical Association had urged the Committee to label.
Dr VIVIENNE
NATHANSON
British Medical Association
We were extremely concerned. We felt it was essential that food be labelled so that the public could choose whether or not to eat these products and know what they were eating, and we also believed that this would raise consumer confidence rather than hiding the information from the public.
BRADSHAW: But those voices were not heeded. In 1995 the FAC decided that, since the Novel Foods Committee had said GM soya was equivalent to non-GM soya, it didn’t need special labelling. A year later it confirmed that decision saying labelling along the lines ‘may contain GM soya derivatives’ was not likely to be very informative to consumers.
NATHANSON: Hiding information raises suspicions and we have to recognise that the last 20 years has been full of stories of scares and fears about foods, some of which have been justified, and in many of the cases the justification has also been about the way information has been hidden.
BRADSHAW: The basic allegation is that you didn’t allow people to choose because you didn’t insist that GM products were labelled in processed foods, and you’ve denied people of the right to choose.
Sir COLIN CAMPBELL
Food Advisory Committee, 1994 - present
That’s enormously pejorative. I’ve never heard that allegation until you uttered it and it’s nonsense.
BRADSHAW: But Tesco, who were now labelling all genetically modified ingredients, admit that initially they’d got it wrong.
DAVID SAWDAY
Spokesman, Tesco
In those early days there were some opinions that were wrong. I think our ideas of what customers wanted and didn’t want have evolved from then. I mean there was never an intention to be dishonest, I think that’s the absolute truth there, but our views on that quickly changed.
BRADSHAW: Six weeks ago, that’s nearly ten years since the question of whether to label GM foods was first discussed by the government’s own committee, a new law on labelling some GM products was finally announced. But even now, not everything made from a GM crop has to be labelled. It’s the job of trading standards officers like Richard Brooks to be the new label police. But he’s finding the power that law now gives him still doesn’t go far enough for some. Food must be labelled if it contains altered DNA from GM crops, but if food is derived from GM plants and then refined and purified to take the genetic material out, as in soya or corn oil say, it doesn’t have to be labelled at all.
RICHARD BROOKS
Trading Standards Officer, Warwickshire County Council
Well this corn oil for example, I don’t know whether it was made from genetically modified corn. Even if it were, it wouldn’t have to be labelled because the oil doesn’t contain any protein or DNA and as such it wouldn’t have to be labelled.
BRADSHAW: It’s so refined that it doesn’t contain the GM ingredients.
BROOKS: Yes, by the time the stuff has been extracted, it doesn’t contain those ingredients.
BRADSHAW: And under the new EC law that means it doesn’t need to be labelled.
BROOKS: That’s correct.
BRADSHAW: But why would anybody want it labelled if it doesn’t have the GM ingredient?
BROOKS: Because a lot of consumers who are concerned about the environment or who have ethical concerns about genetic modification would like to know that when they are making their purchasing decisions.
BRADSHAW: It’s these environmental and ethical concerns that have been growing. There is a great sense of uncertainty about what could happen to our ountryside, with its already delicate environmental balance, if genetically altered material is released into our natural surroundings.
Prof. STEVE JONES
Professor of Genetics, University College London
Nature can fight back in a completely unpredictable way, we know that again and again and again. We’re here because of evolution. The plants are out there because of evolution. Evolution needs raw material, mutations which it picks up and uses in the most startling ways. We’re giving it raw material it’s never had before from the most astonishingly distant parts of the living world. It seems to me quite foolish to suggest that evolution, natural selection, isn’t going to pick it up and utilise it and we’re not going to like that because that is going to happen.
BRADSHAW: New genetic material is now present in the British countryside in the form of GM farm scale crop trials. The government is putting over £3 million into test sites like Lush Hill. The trials are supposed to be kept separate from other crops by a distance of between 50 to 200 metres. But that isolation
can be rendered meaningless by the activities of bees or wind carrying the pollen from the GM trial over to neighbouring fields. Farmers like Pete Richardson knows that bees don’t observe No Fly Zones. His organic farm is near the trial crop and he worries that possible cross pollination from the GM plants could put him out of business.
PETE RICHARDSON
The Soil Association have told us that they are going to monitor the situation with farms close to the genetically modified field trials, and see if any cross-contamination takes place. If this is the case, they have every right to withdraw our symbol and this will jeopardise our livelihood.
BRADSHAW: But the company at the forefront of GM technology are not so worried about what cross-pollination might do.
You're putting genes into the environment in places where they were not naturally found, and that’s playing a kind of roulette with nature. I mean can you be sure that you really know the long-term hazards of what you're doing?
Dr COLIN MERRIT
Technical Director, Monsanto UK
We’ve always changed genetics of crops, changed the genetic makeup of crops through breeding. There’s nothing essentially any different from this.
BRADSHAW: Well there is because you're putting genes in new places aren’t you, and you don’t always know exactly where you're putting them.
MERRIT: No, I mean nature has many ways of changing genetic structure itself, in the soil and so forth, so there is nothing inherently different about this.
BRADSHAW: But some argue that in any trial in the open, cross-pollination simply cannot be controlled, and clearer, more consistent rules for farm trials are now being urged on the government.
Dr JACK CUNNINGHAM
Minister for the Cabinet Office
There is no reason why we should not be able to have in place systems which are robust and which safeguard...
BRADSHAW: But no robust system is going to control the bees is it? You just can’t do it.
CUNNINGHAM: Well.. I’m not suggesting that we’re going to control bees, but we can take appropriate safeguards to prevent these issues which concern people of potential cross-pollination.
BRADSHAW: Potential cross-pollination, you think the risk is there?
CUNNINGHAM: Well nothing is risk-free in life. We don’t live in a risk-free world.
BRADSHAW: But we’ve learnt the whole future of farm trials themselves may be decidedly at risk. Captain Barker has not just been growing a GM crop at Lush Hill, he’s got organic produce too. He’s had to consider pulling out of the GM trials.
Capt. FRED BARKER
I feel between a rock and a hard place on this one. Whichever way I go, I’m offending somebody. I find that a difficult one to answer this week. I have to make a decision what to do. Whichever way I go down, I shall have upset somebody.
BRADSHAW: Captain Barker is not alone in his worries. The GM farm trials are being monitored by the Natural Environment Research Counsel. They fear that because of all the public pressure, and the undeniable risk of protest action, more and more farmers are starting to think that taking part in the GM trial programme just isn’t worth the hassle.
Prof. MIKE ROBERTS
Natural Environment Research Council
If we can’t find enough farmers willing to participate, that would certainly jeopardise the trials. So we are very keen to encourage farmers to participate in the programme. But if they are going to come under the sort of pressure that we are seeing at the moment, clearly many of them will think twice about it.
BRADSHAW: And what’s you're worry if that happens?
ROBERTS: Well the consequence would be we would not have a fully validated field of study.
BRADSHAW: So what impact would that have?
ROBERTS: We would not be able to answer the questions which the public and the government are asking of the scientific community on this issue.
BRADSHAW: One of the most pressing of those questions is about the risk of resistance to antibiotics. Some crops like this GM maize, designed to contain its own insecticide, have also been fitted with a gene that resists certain antibiotics, a cheap way of identifying them. The maize is still growing in Spain despite official British objections that the antibiotic resistance might attach itself to bugs that cause diseases, like meningitis, making them resistant too, and harder to treat.
Dr VIVIENNE
NATHANSON
British Medical Association
I think one of the things that we’ve learnt is that the precautionary principle must apply when we are putting in place anything which could have a significant effect on the environment, and if that can mean the leakage of the genetic modified part of a plant cell and into bacterial epidemics, then we have to recognise that as a very significant threat. That means there should be a moratorium on growth with only pilot sites until we’ve gathered enough evidence and that the researchers should be required to satisfy a committee based on Foods Standards Agency, which is really looking at the benefits and risks to human health.
BRADSHAW: But human health isn’t the only concern of those who worry about GM’s effect on the environment. English Nature, the government’s own advisers, fear the whole food chain will be at risk from the very property of GM crops that farmers are most attracted to, their potential ability to allow farmers to eradicate weeds.
BRIAN JOHNSON
English Nature
This is a field of conventional oil seed rape, and within this field there are lots of weeds growing in amongst the crop. On these weeds there are insects. They live on the weeds and on the seeds produced by the weeds. If this was a genetically modified crop, herbicide tolerant crop, it would be sprayed with a very powerful herbicide to remove all the weeds. No weeds, no insects, no birds because the birds would have nothing to feed on at all.
BRADSHAW: Monsanto, the company that developed plants that are resistant to their own brand of weed-killer insist that such fears for wild life are unfounded. But why are the critics’ fears only coming to light now, with plants already undergoing farm trials? It’s the job of another committee to advise the government on whether it’s safe to go ahead with planting GM crops in Britain. It’s called ACRE, the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment. ACRE too is dominated by scientists who have no basic objection to GM technology. But it does include one member from an environment pressure group. It’s almost ten years since she asked her colleagues to look at how planting GM crops might affect the safety of Britain’s wildlife.
JULIE HILL
Green Alliance Representative, ACRE 1990-99
I can remember raising at some of the earliest meetings that I attended, which was back in 1990/1991, who was going to look at the possible effects of using weed-killers, using chemical agents, in conjunction with these new genetically modified crops.
BRADSHAW: And did ACRE say yes, that’s something we should worry about?
HILL: No, it was never felt that it was part of ACRE’s remit, and that answer was really from the secretariat to ACRE, the government department, the Department of the Environment, as much as from ACRE members.
BRADSHAW: The civil servants in other words.
HILL: Yes, indeed.
BRADSHAW: And they were saying this isn’t your job.
HILL: Yes.
Prof. JOHN BERINGER
Chairman, ACRE 1990-99
In the early days Julie used to get very frustrated because, as Chairman particularly, I was saying, you know, we don’t need to worry too much about this at the moment. What we’ve got to do is to get the base line of safety, the small things, and we’ll worry about those things later on.
BRADSHAW: Professor Berringer and other members did have personal worries about wildlife but didn’t push them onto the public agenda or insist they should be included in their remit. ACRE’s job, after all, was to look at the safety of releasing altered genes into the environment, not to help preserve the beauty of the British countryside. If GM crops meant more weed-killers, the Committee decided, that was something for someone else, the Advisory Committee on Pesticides perhaps, to worry about.
BRIAN JOHNSON
English Nature
They’ve sent that problem across to the Advisory Committee on Pesticides who do not consider that the effects on wildlife generally to be part of their remit, and therefore, the whole issue tends to fall between these two committees, and in the past has not been addressed adequately by either of them.
BRADSHAW: Last week the danger of key issues falling between committees was highlighted in a critical report by the Environment Audit Committee of MP’s. They said a new super body was needed which would also address ethical and consumer concerns. The remit of ACRE has now been widened to consider wildlife. It is also now advertising for a new team of members, but will they be encouraged to ask tough questions?
Will you be finding some fresh blood, some people perhaps who are cynical or suspicious of the whole technology?
Dr JACK CUNNINGHAM,
MP
Minister for the Cabinet Office
Well I don’t want people who are cynical. I want people who are going to do an effective job in the public interest. That’s what these advisory committees are there for, and let me say....
BRADSHAW: But the critics say that these advisory committees are full of people who basically endorse the technology, basically are sympathetic to it, and that doesn’t represent the public.
CUNNINGHAM: Well I think people who say that, make that assertion, are wrong. Since the government came to office we’ve taken action to put members in the public interest, members who represent the consumer interests, on every one of our advisory committees, every single one.
BRADSHAW: Later this month the government will publish a review of the regulations that cover every aspect of GM crops and foods. Even those who have personally involved in some of the decisions taken so far accept that changes in the system must be made. Few people now trust the government and its array of
committees to do what’s best for them.
Aren’t the days when people trusted scientists like yourself gone for ever because of BSE?
Prof. DEREK BURKE
Chairman, Advisory Committee on Novel Foods, 1989-97
Yes I think they have, and that’s why I think the regulatory system has to change. But we do still need technical judgment, and the snap judgments that we’re getting in the headlines and from the Green groups are not sufficient for public policy.
BRADSHAW: Sceptical British consumers have now forced their will onto supermarkets, big food manufacturing companies and even some farmers. The Environmental Audit Committee has predicted that it will take the government up to ten years to rebuild public confidence in the way they handle GM issues. In the meantime, while British shoppers demand they be given a clear choice, there are those at the top of government who continue to give it the benefit of the doubt.
Do you buy GM food?
CUNNINGHAM: Well I’d eat GM food, yes.
THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT: BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS-HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY
CREDITS
Reporter
Steve Bradshaw
Producers
Daniel Brittain-Catlin
Rabinder Minhas
Deputy Editors
Clive Edwards
Karen O’Connor
Editor
Peter Horrocks
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