The Policy Ethics And Life Sciences Research Institute (PEALS) of the University of Newcastle, UK, ran a citizen's jury exercise which involved evidence from a balanced panel of expert witnesses whom the jury were able to examine.
http://www.gmjury.org/witness.html
The whole process was overseen by a balanced panel of stakeholders.
http://www.gmjury.org/oversight.html
Here's the evidence of two of the experts with concerns about GM.
The first is Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy and a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. He is also a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal Colleges of Physicians.
The second is Michael Hart, a family farmer on a tenanted farm in Cornwall and Chairman of the Small and Family Farm Alliance (SFFA).
You can download the summary (20KB) of what occurred or the full report (487KB) as PDFs, here: http://www.gmjury.org
The verdicts from two separate such jury exercises can be found here: http://www.gmjury.org/verdict.html
The two verdicts broadly agree, in that both Juries called for:
*A halt to the sale of GM foods currently available, and to the proposed commercial growing of GM crops. This conclusion was based on the lack of evidence of benefit and the precautionary principle.
*Long-term research into the real risks of damage to the environment and the potential for harm.
*An end to blanket assertions that the GM crops are necessary to feed the starving in the Third World, given the complex social and economic factors that lie behind such hunger.
Among a number of wider concerns raised by the juries were:
*A concern that the gradual privatisation of scientific research is threatening the independent regulatory assessment of GM technologies, together with a call for future research to be more accountable to the population.
Read on: http://www.gmjury.org/verdict.html
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Evidence from Tim Lang
http://www.gmjury.org/evid_tim.html
I look at GM from a policy perspective. The key things for me about GM are:
Why it is being introduced
I mean really why? What good is it? My conclusion so far is that GM seems to offer little (but that doesn't mean it won't some time in the future.) But the big issue is do we really need it right now? So fast?
The power of the interests promoting it
These include agro-chemical and seed companies, some processors, some supporters of 'Big Science' approach to technology. But there are also powerful forces opposed or hesitant about GM. These include retailers, some manufacturers and growers, and the vast majority of consumers.
Factors affecting its roll-out
There is a battle going on within the food supply chain. GM is going to be a test case for where power lies. I am interested to see who jumps in which direction. We are supposed to live in a market economy where lots of producers compete for the attention of lots of consumers. In fact, that is not the case for the food economy or GM. Here we have relatively few companies with strong market control over many consumers. (In the EU, there are 3.2 million farmers, a few hundred thousand manufacturers, about 100 key retail buying desks, all serving 250 million consumers!)
Its potential health impact
The Science Review Panel published in July 2003 was vague on this point. It said there were no health ill-effects, but actually there has been not much research. Allergies are a possible worry, but for me, that is not the issue. The big food killers in the world are malnutrition on the one hand (and there the jury has to be out; GM so far is mostly irrelevant to raising productivity. And so-called diseases of affluence (heart disease, diabetes, some cancers, etc). Here GM is largely irrelevant, too. We know what is needed to protect health: eat lots of fruit & veg, less meat, more fish and more diversity. GM is neutral here, by and large not an issue.
Its environmental impact
Here the evidence is patchy, it seems to me. Some problems, some blanks.
Right now, in late July 2003, I admit to being quite amused by what is happening about GM. A most interesting split has just emerged over GM. I don't mean a split between those who are for it and those who are against. I refer to the split between government and the big retailers.
The Science Panel has produced a long and comprehensive report last week. This is a pretty good snapshot of current knowledge. But it isn't about what we ought to know. The section on health I find particularly thin.
At the same time, the No 10 Downing Street Strategy Unit has produced a report that says resistance to GM is high and that whether GM gets the thumbs-up or not, it is not going to win public acceptance.
This came to a head, for me, 10 days ago when the top bosses of Tesco, Sainsbury and Asda went to No. 10 Downing Street for a discussion about GM. The Prime Minister wants them to be more enthusiastic about GM. They were reluctant and said so. 'Listen to the science which gives GM the all-clear' was the Prime Minister's line. 'We listen to our customers' was the reply.
Everyone knows that, by and large, the Government has been minded to promote GM and other uses of biotechnology. With a few exceptions, the vast majority of Ministerial statements have been quite clear. Only Michael Meacher, the former Minister at the Dept of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs publicly expressed worries. The Prime Minister has been persistent in his support. The Minister for Science, Lord Sainsbury, not only supports it as a Minister but out of his own pocket, via his Gatsby Foundation. (In this he is being wonderfully consistent.)
'Big' science, led by the Royal Society, is a resolute supporter of GM. The Royal Society (and others) argue this is a fight as significant as that between the Darwinians and the Church over whether the human species evolved over millions of years (descending from the apes) or creation happened as stated in the Bible (the Adam and Eve story). This approach to science likes to paint the GM story as a battle between Rationality and Superstition.
I think the fight is more complex than that. And I suspect the more gung-ho scientists are making a mistake. This isn't a fight between scientists and non-scientists. Science versus the Luddites. This is a struggle over the direction of science. What sort of science? In whose interest? What for? Who is paying and framing what we want scientists to do.
More importantly, it is also a fight over who is more important in the supply chain. Governments or consumers?
When I say, as I did at the top of this article, that I think the row about GM is about power, I don't mean power as in Political as in Party Politics with a big 'P'. As an aside, we can note however that Big Retailing used to favour the Conservatives resolutely. In the 1992 election, supermarket bosses signed a famous letter to The Times giving unequivocal support to the re-election of John Major.
Five years later, no food sector was more New Labour than the retailers, with David Sainsbury resigning to become a Labour Minister, and Tesco sponsoring the Millennium Dome (surely wasted money, if ever there was). With the one exception of the fall-out when the Prime Minister referred to farmers being held in an "armlock" by the supermarkets, retailers have been held in awe by the present government. Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, last month even argued that he wanted to end self-regulation by the Law Society and heralded the day when there might be a law firm "Tesco Law".
So, this is not, repeat not, a government that hates supermarkets. In fact it has been strongly in favour of them. And that is why the split over GM between the Prime Minister and the big retailers is so significant. What is important about this very public fall-out over GM is who and what governs regulation. There are now two distinct regulatory structures.
The first is governmental, the formal world of laws and regulations, ranging from world regulations and standards laid down by or in the name of the State. These are now a function of what in my policy world, we call 'multilevel governance'. This rather pompous term is important. When we go to vote, we elect governments (European, national, local). Gradually, so the argument goes, rather than having one main government, the national government, which is the ultimate power, we now inhabit a world with many levels of government. Modern politics is about the tussles between these 'levels' of government. Hence the term 'multilevel governance'.
In food, at the global level, there is a body most people have never heard of. It is called Codex Alimentarius Commission. This has been pre-eminent since the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the set of world trade rules. From 1994, food became part of this world set of agreements between national governments. Also, for us in Britain, since Mrs Thatcher signed the 1986 Single European Act, it is the European Union which is the 'level' where food laws get hammered out between the 15 member states (about to be 25!). National and regional governments are still important vehicles for formal regulations, which are delivered at the local level by food law enforcement officers.
Alongside this formal system there is another system of regulations and standards. These are set by companies. And it is these, which in my view, are now as, if not more, important than the regulations set by Governments at national and international level. When Tesco or Sainsbury or Asda or Safeway (the big four that control 70% of the UK food market) set contracts and specifications for their suppliers, these are more important than law almost. Often they set standards HIGHER than the law. These have quietly become the real power.
So that is what is so important about the row between the Big Four Retailer bosses and No 10 Downing Street.
Not for the last time, I suspect, we have seen a moment when a real fissure opens up between Governments who claim to control regulations and retailers who really gate-keep between primary producer and end-consumers. Where will this end?
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Evidence from Michael Hart
http://www.gmjury.org/evid_michael.html
I want to talk to you as a farmer who has spent time with other farmers who already grow GM crops in the USA, Canada and India. I spent 16 days in the USA last August seeing GM crops growing and talking to the farmers growing them. So I have some first hand experience of GM crops.
I must also say here that I am not anti technology.
Farmers have been told that this technology holds great promises
That it will help feed the world
That it will reduce pesticide use
That it will reduce cost of growing crops
That it will provide environmental benefits
That it can co-exist with conventional conventional and organic crops
That it is safe to eat and grow
Having spent time talking with farmers in the USA and talking to Canadian farmers on a trip to the UK as one farmer talking to other farmers most if not all of the above claims are not working. The only benefit I have heard US and Canadian farmers claim, is that "it makes farming very big farms easy".
If I take each of the claims in turn starting with:
Feeding the world
The yields of the existing GM crops are no better than conventional non-GM crop yields. Maybe future development of GM crops could increase yields or enable crops to grow in drought stricken areas of the world but not the present crops.
In my experience it is not that there is not enough food to feed the world but the lack of storage and distribution of the food that is produced that is the problem in many parts of the world.
Reduction in pesticide use
This is very clearly not the case in the USA and Canada for several different reasons.
1. Weeds have become resistant to glyphosate the herbicide that crops has been genetically modified to be un-affected by. In the USA I saw several such weeds, water hemp and mares tail to name two of them and these weeds were becoming a major problem.
2. Volunteer weeds, these are plants which were sown as a crop but which then also grow in the next crop even sometimes for several years after they were originally planted so you have oilseed rape plants growing in wheat or wheat in potatoes. If you have two crops which are herbicide tolerant to the same herbicide as in the USA with soybean and maize you can not control the volunteer weeds in the next crop
The answer to both problems is adding another different herbicide to the glyphosate in order to kill these resistant plants and weeds. In farming this is called a tank mix that is adding two or more other chemicals into the tank of the sprayer.
So other herbicides like, 2 4 D, MCPA or Atrazine are used to control weeds all three of these herbicides are ones that farmers had hoped to stop using or to have reduced the usage. But in both the US and Canada their use is increasing.
In the USA and Canada farmers are also using more glyphosate, they were told that one spray of glyphosate at the right time would control weeds but this has proved not to be the case many farmers told me that they are spraying 2 or 3 times to control weeds.
I have here a page from farmindustrynews.com 8th October 2002 in an article about weed control a spokesperson for Syngenta David Elsers says:
"If you use roundup on soybean and corn year after year its not a question of if but when you'll run into a resistance problem. We strongly discourage using glyphosate on the same field two years in a row".
So even the sellers of GM crops are accepting that there are problems.
I don't have time now to cover all the problems farmers are encountering with weed control. But it is very clear to me that far from reducing pesticide use it has in fact increased it.
Maybe it is something, which will come up in questions later. I have one final thing to say on weeds from my visit to India and other work I have been involved in the developing world, weeds can play a very important role as food for humans and animals during the growing season are therefore an important part of agriculture and food.
It will reduce the cost of growing crops
GM seeds cost farmers more to buy than ordinary seeds but before you can even buy them you have to buy the right to buy them by signing and paying for a technology agreement which in Canada cost $15 per acre and in the USA so much a bag of seed. Add to this the extra pesticide used by most farmers and with crop yields the same as conventional at best.
It is very doubtful if there is any reduction in growing costs. Especially over the long term as the problem with herbicide resistant weeds and volunteers becomes greater. I will say more on the technology agreements later time willing.
It will provide environmental benefits
As much of this claim is based on the reduced use of herbicides which as I have already explained is not the case it is difficult to see any other benefits for current GM crops.
IN the USA I spoke with farming advisers who were telling farmers to use a residual autumn herbicide spray to kill weeds and volunteer plants over the winter - winter stubble and the plants in it are an important source of food for wildlife such as birds spraying to kill all live plants will not help that wildlife.
GM crops, conventional and organic crops can co-exist side by side
This is one of the most discussed problems about GM crops particularly here in the UK. From the experiences of farmers in the USA and Canada co-existence can not and will not work.
Research has been done and is being done which is showing that contamination is happening due to pollen being blown in the wind carried by insects such as bees. That gene bridging is much more wide spread than was originally thought due to volunteers in crops from.
In Canada recent work has shown that the contamination extends even to the seed which is being used by the plant breeders to breed new varieties in spite of very strict rules of separation distances between crops, the cleaning of seeding and harvest machinery. In recent tests on 27 seed plots tested for GM contamination 95% were contaminated and of that 95 % 52% was above the legal maximum level for Canada for seed crops.
In western Canada it is now impossible to grow organic oilseed rape crops due to this contamination. In the USA with soybeans and maize it is very much the same story.
I do not believe that we have any chance of co-existence. If in Canada oilseed rape can reach the point in 6-7 years since GM crops started being grown that 95% of the seed stocks are contaminated it will happen here too and much faster in an agriculturally crowded Britain
With this problem of co-existence comes problems in relationship to the technology agreements I mentioned earlier and in farmers rights as in the right to choose to grow non GM or organic crops and in who is liable if contamination occurs.
I will expand on this question of liability in a minute but first
Food safety
There has been no long-term study done on the effects of eating GM crops as food for either humans or animals. All of the claims for food safety are based on the assumption that as these crops are substantially equivalent or in plain English nearly the same as the non-GM crops.
So if the non-GM crops are safe so must the GM ones be too, because all they have is some extra genes. Many point to the USA and say they have been eating it for 6 years and nobodies died, how do we know if the research has not been done.
Liability and technology agreements
One of the major issues surrounding GM crops for farmers is that of our rights as farmers to save seed and who is liable for any environmental damage, food safety problems or contamination of non gm or organic crops.
At the moment in all of the countries growing GM crops the liability for any problems occurring from GM crops lies with the farmer. The companies who have developed this technology accept no liability beyond the seed germinating. So as it stands the farmer is the one held liable if anything goes wrong.
Quote from technology agreement:
"In no event shall Monsanto or any seller be liable for any incidental, consequential, special or punitive damages".
Now if these crops are safe to eat, benefit the environment and according to those who are developing it a generally good thing, why will they not except liability for it beyond the seed germinating.
Farmers in the UK have been told by insurance companies including the leading farm insurers that we will not get insurance cover for GM crops and for any liability arising out of our growing a GM crop.
In both the USA and Canada the biotech companies have been very aggressive in using the law against farmers who have used their patented genes in growing crops however it got here and who have not signed a technology agreement with them. Leaving farmers facing large fines and ruin for what is being seen by the courts as stealing of the GM genes however it came to be in the crop.
Again I hope we have time to expand on this during questions.
So to finish as a farmer I have serious doubts as to the claims made for current GM crops. So I see no benefits for UK farmers, consumers or the environment if we use such technology in the UK. In fact I see major dangers for farmers over the question of liability and their rights to save seed from one year to use in the next.
I have heard many times over the last few weeks that yes there are some problems with the current crops but the next generation of GM crops will be better. In my life time I have heard this many times just round the corner it will be better or yes there may be problems but science will come up with the answers but that's what happened with the Nuclear industry in the 1960's we were told science will give us the answers to the problems and yet 40 years later we still don't have all the answers.
I don't want it to be the same for GM crops. Food is too important to our survival to get it wrong.