Meeting Papers

AEBC 04/13

PROGRESS REPORT ON "NON FOOD AGRICULTURE" WORKSTREAM

Background

1. This paper gives a brief summary of progress with the Commission’s work on the role biotechnology has to play in the non-food agriculture sector. The Commission has begun to review the area looking at the key drivers behind non-food agriculture and biotechnology in non-food agriculture. The workstream will then build on this by focusing on three case-study areas. Within each of these areas a specific case study will be chosen for a detailed regulatory analysis. Following these case studies the workstream will then test and challenge attitudes and aspirations of the public towards biotechnology in this area.



2. The workstream has been designed to be modular, comprising several distinct stages, including information gathering and analysis, investigation of case studies and public engagement. These are being actively project managed with the aim of completing the workstream around by the end of 2005.

Core group


3. The research agendas workstream is being driven forward and overseen within the AEBC by a core group of three members: David Buckeridge (workstream "champion"), Justine Thornton and Dave Carmichael. Other AEBC members are also involved on an ad hoc basis. In keeping with the modular approach, the intention is for other AEBC members to get involved as and when they wish or when areas of relevance to their interests or expertise are being discussed.



4. The core group first met on the 15 April, at this meeting they developed the scope of the project so that the secretariat could start gathering evidence and do other background work to an agreed framework. At this meeting the core group also agreed to be ambitious in the public engagement aspects of the workstream in particular to explore the possibility of working in partnership with a TV company to produce an interactive TV programme looking at the future of non-food crops and the role biotechnology might play. If successful this could form part of the public opinion work although the primary aim is to produce a programme that is accessible rather than highly academic. This was seen as important given the Commission’s remit to engage and involve the public.



5. The broad scope of the project was agreed, as tabled at the Commission’s meeting in London in May(1). Following the May Commission meeting the core group met again on 7 June 2004 at this meeting the core group agreed to a framework for the regulatory analysis, agreed a draft work plan and finalised a TV pitch document. The core group also agreed that it should use engagement with relevant experts to select case studies.

Case studies


6. The Commission has agreed to focus the work of this workstream in three areas, biofuels/forestry, bio-plastics and bio-pharmaceuticals. Within each of these areas one or perhaps two case studies will be selected for detailed regulatory ansysis these case studies will aim to identify gaps in regulation and assess whether the pertinent regulations are fit for purpose. They will also identify regulatory and policy interactions and implications.

Information gathering


7. The AEBC secretariat is gathering information about non-food agriculture and biotechnology in non-food agriculture in general and is now collecting more detailed information within each of the three case study areas. In addition the secretariat is collecting information about the relevant policy drivers. This data is being collected to provide the background information required for the detailed regulatory analyses and to inform the public opinion work.



8. At the July meeting in Aberdeen the core-group wants to be able to select the specific case study in the forestry area. The core group recommends that Commission Members should be prepared to sign off a case study at the July meeting in Aberdeen. The core-group proposes to select specific case studies on bio plastics and biopharmaceuticals in discussion with experts at core group meetings between July and September.



9. The intention is to produce a paper setting out and analysing the background information gathered on biotechnology and non-food agriculture in the autumn and to produce separate reports on the case studies as the regulatory analyses are completed and analysed. The detailed format of these papers will be discussed at the core group’s meetings between July and September.

Public and stakeholder engagement work


10. The core group agreed that the design of the public opinion work would be dependent on the nature of the results of the case studies and should wait until at least the preliminary results of the case studies are available.



11. Wider public engagement is a key part of the workstream. Along with a background paper one of the first outputs of the work stream will be a wall chart outing the range of non-food crops and where they have and potentially could be developed with biotechnology. This chart will also identify the case studies chosen for detailed analysis. On a longer time frame the core group is currently pitching the idea of a TV programme to TV production companies and broadcasters (see pitch at Annex A). The primary aim of this is to engage and inform the public, although if successful the workstream has been designed so that a programme could form an integrated part of the public opinion work.

AEBC secretariat, June 2004

(1) Paper AEBC/04/06 (Annex) - see http://www2.aebc.gov.uk/aebc/meetings/papers.shtml#London5-6May2004

Annex A: Agreed Pitch for a television programme

Proposal

What do we do with our farms if we don’t need the food?

Yes of course we will always need some of it but much of what our farmers produce isn’t going to be needed in the future or will be imported more cheaply from abroad.

The Biotechnology Commission - the Government’s independent adviser on agriculture and the environment - has just completed its three major studies on GM crops, GM animals and the implications of GM in the countryside.

It’s now turning its attention to "non-food crops" - crops the country might produce in the future, highlighting the role biotechnology and maybe genetically modified will play. "Pharmacrops" - growing things like vaccines in plants, bioplastics and energy crops for electricity are all possibilities. Addressing problems of climate change, sustainability and mass disease.

We will be considering what the implications of growing these crops might be. What needs encouraging, what might need careful monitoring, what might be bad for the environment, and what the public wants and would accept

And we think there’s a television programme [episode of Horizon etc] in it - perhaps even an interactive one - we could feed what the public thinks back to government.

The Biotech Commission is made up of scientists, environmentalists and lawyers - all leaders in their field - and we would be happy to work with you as we begin our own investigation which should be producing its first results later this year.

David Buckeridge & Judith Hann (on behalf of the AEBC)

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Programme Pen Picture

Let’s get emotional for a minute...it’s true...we love our countryside! Whether we live in it, by it or even only visit it occasionally, we feel it is ours, and we care for it deeply.

In the old days, the countryside was a hive of industry. A mosaic of rural trades and people working the land. We didn’t just make food on the farms, but a rich variety of diverse goods were manufactured on the land, all fuelling the rural economy and providing meaningful work for vast numbers of people.

Then a revolution. We learned the hardest lesson of the century when we found this Island short of food and fighting for it’s very survival. We asked of our farmers, our technologists, and of the countryside they worked in. We went back to the land.... and the land delivered.

Food security came at a price...a side effect we didn’t really appreciate. Perhaps, back then we didn’t really have a choice. Hedgerows disappeared, machines got bigger and efficiency and productivity became the name of the game. And the focus was food, leaving many of those traditional countryside products sidelined.

But what about now? Did you know there’s another change on the horizon? And it could be the biggest shake up we’ve seen to our landscape for 60 years...

People and governments are talking about a more sustainable way of farming the land, with more emphasis on the environment - it’s being driven by a large number of interrelated initiatives such as the global climate change agenda, the free and fair world trade agenda, reform of the common agricultural policy, government’s new strategies on sustainable farming and energy, and the new EU wide rules on managing water resources to name but a few. So what’s going on? We’ve got problems, and they are much closer to home than you might have realised. And, once again, our countryside could be set to play a vital role in providing solutions.

We simply don’t need all the food we redesigned our countryside to produce and subsidising its production is making people in poor countries poorer. But there are a whole variety of things we do need.

Only last month, a group formed, supported by the prime minister to raise the awareness of global warming. The great thing about plants is that they actually lock up the damaging carbon emissions that lead to it. We need more trees!

But this is about more than the changing climate. We are running out of the fossil fuels on which we have for so long depended on for heat power and industrial feedstocks we must find replacements quickly and they need to be renewable or the price of electricity, petrol anything made out of plastic are all going to quickly rise. Renewable Energy crops can be can grown for direct heat and power generation (e.g. coppiced willow) or as a feedstock for liquid fuels (e.g. oilseed rape for biodiesel, cereal and beet crops for bioethanol).

In the west we are all living longer so many more of us will face crippling and potentially fatal diseases - the risks of cancer, arthritis, obesity are all increasingly on the up. In the developing world, there’s a different picture in many countries diseases likes AIDs, TB, Malaria, Polio, Cholera and Rabies mean life expectancy is dropping! These countries need help. So we all need more, better and cheaper medicines. Some crops are already grown to produce medicines, clever breeding will develop more, but modern biotechnology has created the prospect of genetically modifying plants to vaccines and other pharmaceuticals in plants. Things that we can currently make a few kilograms of like vaccines and anti-viral drugs for treating AIDs could be made in tonne qualities - enough to save millions of lives.

And a whole range of other non-food crops: crops grown for other purposes of which examples include: fibres (cotton, hemp, flax), lubricants and waxes (oilseed rape, linseed), printing inks (oil seed rape) essential oils and dyes (woad), compostable plastics (starch-crops).

Developing these crops with conventional crops with conventional breeding to be as good at producing non-food products as current crops are at producing food will take many years but biotechnology can help out better understanding of genomics will help us breed crops much faster than we could before. More controversially, genetic modification will create new crops that produce things that are not produced by existing crops like plastics and vaccines.

Our landscape used to provide these things. Once again, there is the opportunity to embrace biotechnology, and make a whole host of new products on our farms and in our rural businesses, going full circle.

But do we want our precious landscape used in this way? Will there be side effects and will we see them coming this time around? What role do we want biotechnology and genetic modification to play? What are the possibilities and who is working on them?

It is our countryside, our green and pleasant land. What do we want for its future - it’s time you had your say.