PG Economics - a GM WATCH profile

[FOR LINKS TO SOURCES, visit https://web.archive.org/web/20080209020920/http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=308 ]

Peter Barfoot and Graham Brookes are co-directors of the UK-based company PG Economics Ltd. They describe themselves as 'Independent and objective consultants servicing the agricultural, agricultural supply trade, rural and food industries'.

PG Economics has produced a number of reassuring 'reports dealing with the economic and strategic issues of GMO crops through the food chain'.

In publishing the reports, PG Economics has issued press releases such as:

*GM and non GM arable crops can co-exist in the EU without problems: says new research paper
*Co-existence of GM and non GM crops in the UK can occur without problems
*GM opponents' theory on co-existence 'exaggerated' according to new report
*New research proves that co-existence is NOT a problem

The headlines generated include:

*New study supports GM crop co-existence
*Co-existence Thought Possible for Maize in Spain
*Consultants Say Biotech Crops Easily Coexist with Conventional and Organic
*GM contamination claims 'exaggerated', claims study
*Successful co-existence for GM food crops in 5 steps, new research
*Study backs GM co-existence

For the biotechnology industry, such headlines are literally 'good news', particularly when generated by an 'independent and objective' source. BioScience UK, the website of GM company Bayer CropScience, made plain its excitement in May 2004, 'Can GM and non-GM crops really co-exist in the European Union? According to the respected economic consultants group PG Economics, yes they can!!'

BioScience UK did not mention that the report was commissioned by Agricultural Biotechnology in Europe (ABE), an industry lobby group whose members include Bayer CropScience, as well as BASF, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, Monsanto and Syngenta. Nor was this fact mentioned by PG Economics in its press release of the report's findings. ABE was mentioned in the report itself but without clarification of ABE's membership or of the fact that it is an industry body.

PG Economics says of its customers, 'Our clients come from both public and private sectors. These include the leading biotechnology companies, agro-chemical manufacturers, seed companies & plant breeders, animal feed ingredient manufacturers, breakfast cereal manufacturers, oilseed crushers, food processors, starch/sweetener manufacturers, farmers organisations, UK government (eg, DEFRA) and the European Commission.'

According to PG Economics, the company's Philosophy and Attributes include, 'Active customer involvement in the development of consultancy project targets and implementation'. PG Economics also assures potential customers that from the initial point of contact it will 'endeavour to put forward a proposal to define our methodology and expected outcomes'. (What PG Economics can do to assist you)

As well as Agricultural Biotechnology in Europe (ABE), those the company has assisted have included ABE's UK equivalent, the Agricultural Biotechnology Council (ABC), Du Pont, American Cyanamid, the American Soybean Association, Novartis, the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, Monsanto Europe, the European Commission, Cebecco, Weetabix and the UK Government's Cabinet Office Strategy Unit.

There is a striking congruence between the known goals of some of these organisations and the findings of the research they have commissioned. For instance, the report 'GM Rice: Will This Lead the Way for Global Acceptance of GM Crop Technology?' was commissioned by the biotech-industry backed International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), which works to achieve the rapid transfer of GM crops into the developing world.

PG Economics' ISAAA report concludes that the adoption of GM rice by developing countries would mean:

*for consumers - lower real prices, greater security of supply, and the availability of nutritionally enhanced rice;

*for farmers - reductions in costs of production, higher yields, greater flexibility/convenience in production, and additionalrevenues;

*for developing countries - improved food security, improved health and welfare for their people, and environmental benefits.

The only losers from the adoption of GM rice in developing countries, according to the projections in the report, would be (a) those farmers who failed to adopt GM rice and (b) the biotech industry itself which would make little money out of its adoption while losing sales of pesticides. On the other hand, GM rice would be so successful that it would lead to ‘spin off’ gains 'for adoption of GM technology in other crops' as well as encouraging the global acceptance of GM.

In terms of biotech industry PR, the findings of the PG Economics' report read like a dream come true. Its carefully argued conclusions are, in fact, indistinguishable from the industry's own promotional claims.

The key findings of the report press released as 'Co-existence of GM and non GM crops in the UK can occur without problems, says new research paper', were also music to the ears of the customer that commissioned it - the Agricultural Biotechnology Council. The ABC is made up of biotech companies anxious to see the early introduction of GM crops into the UK. The ABC's member companies are BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, Monsanto and Syngenta.

Once again PG Economics' press release failed to mention who had commissioned the report. The report itself did mention the sponsor but again failed to make clear that the ABC, whose initials are remarkably similar to those of the AEBC - the UK Government's Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission, is a biotech industry body.

Another PG Economics report, which argued that GM crops coexisted successfully with conventional and organic crops in the United States, led to accusations that the company had misrepresented the findings of a survey of organic farmers in order to support its premise. The paper stated that claims by 'anti-GM groups' that GM and non-GM crops cannot coexist in North America were 'greatly exaggerated' and that coexistence measures had 'been delivering effective coexistence for nearly nine years'.

The conclusions of the PG Economics paper were heavily based on a 2002 survey by the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF). According to Ken Roseboro, the OFRF survey actually showed 'the exact opposite: that GM crops are starting to cause economic and operational hardships to organic farmers'.

Roseboro writes, 'The main problem with PG Economics' findings is that they ignored the fact that the OFRF survey included organic farmers in areas where GM corn and soybeans are not grown . In fact, the survey had 1,034 respondents, but only 100 to 150 (ie a maximum of about 15%) produced corn or soybeans and were at-risk from GM crops.

'Farmers who live in Midwestern states, where the majority of GM corn and soybeans are grown, reported significant impacts. In these states, 70 to 80% of respondents reported negative impacts from GMOs. In addition, up to 88% of organic farmers in Midwestern states said they had to take some measures to protect their farms from GMO contamination. By quoting only the nationwide statistics the PG Economics authors, Graham Brookes and Peter Barfoot, are able to minimise the problems caused to non-GM and organic growers .' (Biotech, organic coexistence research paper skews facts to support dubious conclusion - emphasis added)

That Brookes and Barfoot might feel more sympathetic to the biotechnology industry rather than its critics or organic farmers would not be surprising. Not only is their company heavily dependent on both GM crops as a research issue and GM industry clients, Barfoot has spent the vast majority of his career either working in the biotech industry or in businesses wholly dependent on it, and with associates who display an extreme antipathy towards both organic farming and those who raise concerns about GM crops.

Two years before he co-founded PG Economics, he launched the website of BioPortfolio Limited, of which he is still the MD. The site claims to offer 'a global directory on biotechnology businesses and acts as a "jump site" to corporate web sites, news and stock prices.'

During the mid-1990s Barfoot was also involved with Meredith Lloyd-Evans of BioBridge Associates - a biotechnology business development consultancy. Barfoot and Lloyd-Evans also jointly authored, EU Boasts Good Science Base and Economic Prospects for Crop Biotechnology

Lloyd-Evans is a fervent supporter of 'crop biotechnology'. He has described Greenpeace's opposition to GM crops as having 'no science behind it'. Lloyd Evans says it has 'much more of the flavour of a sustained witch-hunt, based on the same kind of doctrinaire and destructive propaganda that underpinned Lysenko's diatribes against rational plant and animal genetics in the US (mainly aimed at his scientific and political rivals and doubly devastating because of the support he obtained from Stalin), Goebbels's and Goering's campaigns against non-Aryan activities, including science and other pursuits that might lead to national progress, and Pol Pot's dehumanisation of his invented ideological opponents'. (AgBioView)

Barfoot's co-author and business associate has also attacked the 'organic movements' as being 'more like extremist religious cults than logical realists'. On the role of GM critics in relation to the refusal by some African countries to accept GM-grain as food aid, he goes so far as to say, 'their eco-imperialism is the closest that we in the Western world are now getting to supporting genocide in the third world'.

Prior to working with Lloyd-Evans, Barfoot had a 12 year stint (1985-1995) with the Agricultural Genetics Company, which eventually led onto Axis Genetics. Axis' aim was to produce pharmaceuticals from GM plants, as well as insect resistant GM plants, but both projects floundered as a result of the anti-GM backlash of the late 1990s. Axis Genetics was at the very centre of that storm as its products included the GM potatoes researched by Dr Arpad Pusztai and colleagues. Pusztai's research suggested that the Axis GM potatoes had damaging effects on rats.

Axis was founded by Paul Rodgers. As well as working for Rodgers' company, Barfoot produced a report on GM for another company co-founded by Rodgers - Pestax Ltd. Pestax, like Axis, failed amidst the public backlash against GM.

Rodgers' partner, Dr Geraldine Rodgers, has made public statements every bit as extreme as those of Lloyd-Evans. Rodgers warns, 'Eating organically grown food puts consumers at risk of the following diseases: Food poisoning from: Salmonella, E.coli 0157 and Cryptosporidiosis, mycotoxin poisoning, liver cancer and other cancers (e.g oesophageal) and probably new variant CJD... While everyone's peering at GM foods down an electron microscope we could be in for the much heralded epidemics of cancer courtesy of the organic farming lobby'. (Eating Organically Grown Food Puts Consumers at Risk of Diseases)

It must raise questions about the extent to which PG Economics can be styled 'independent and objective consultants' when it comes to issues like the co-existence of GM crops with organic agriculture given that:

*the clients for its co-existence reports are almost invariably the biotechnology industry or its close associates

*much of Peter Barfoot's career has been spent in businesses dependent on the succes of the biotechnology industry, as well as in an entrepreneurial culture marked by extreme antipathy towards both organic farming and those who raise concerns about GM crops.