AGRICULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT BIOTECHNOLOGY COMMISSION

SEVENTEENTH COMMISSION MEETING

FRIDAY 4TH APRIL 2003

1 GREAT GEORGE STREET, LONDON

MINUTES OF MEETING

Papers

AEBC 03/04 Consumer choice and coexistence note on emerging issues

Members

Professor Malcolm Grant (Chair)
Ms Julie Hill (Deputy Chair)
Ms Anna Bradley
Dr Dave Carmichael
Professor Phil Dale
Dr Ed Dart
Dr Matthew Freeman
Mr John Gilliland
Professor Robin Grove-White
Dr Rosie Hails
Dr Derek Langslow
Professor Jeff Maxwell
Dr Sue Mayer
Ms Justine Thornton
Dr Roger Turner

Secretariat

Mr Richard Abel
Mr Andrea Bovolenta
Mr Chris Hepworth
Mr Matthew Hughes
Mrs Laura McMahon

THE MEETING WAS CONDUCTED IN PUBLIC SESSION

Apologies for absence

1. Apologies had been received from Ms ChiChi Iweajunwa, Ms Judith Hann and Ms Helen Browning

Introductory matters

2. The Chair opened the meeting by welcoming members of the public who had come to observe the Commission’s proceedings.

3. The unconfirmed minutes of the sixteenth Commission meeting were confirmed as a correct record of the meeting and Members agreed to their being posted as such on the AEBC website.

Action: secretariat

4. The Chair reported that the Commission had received a reply from Sir John Krebs of the Food Standards Agency to the Chair’s letter to Sir John. Correspondence had also been received from Margaret Beckett, Secretary of State for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, enclosing a statement about the decision-making process in relation to applications for consent to market particular GM crop varieties.

5. The Chair welcomed Dr Elizabeth Hopkins who would be assisting the Commission in the production of the Consumer Choice and Coexistence report. The Commission were very pleased that she had been able to assist with this challenging and urgent work.

6. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the emerging thinking of the Consumer Choice and Coexistence sub-group and to seek the Commission’s opinions on a variety of aspects relating to the structure and content of a draft report. The report would be published alongside the report on liability. The content of the reports now overlapped and in order to inform the whole Commission of how they were linked, the secretariat would circulate the liability stakeholder seminar paper to all Members.

Action: secretariat

7. The Chair invited Dr Rosie Hails, convenor of the Consumer Choice and Coexistence subgroup, to introduce the note of the sub-group’s emerging thinking that had been circulated to Members (AEBC/03/04). There were four main topics on which Members’ views were sought:

8. Dr Hails invited Dr Roger Turner to give an overview of how a protocol to achieve a particular threshold for a crop might be introduced and monitored, building on current practices used in the production of basic and certified seed.

9. Dr Turner explained that during the initial period following possible commercialisation it seemed reasonable to assume that GM seed would only be sold to farmers who could be expected to follow any coexistence guidelines and who had a track record of managing their farms responsibly. Careful monitoring and record keeping would be part of the condition of sale. It would be expected that information would be collected regarding separation distances, geneflow and post-harvest management, although it was not clear by whom or who would pay for this. Dr Turner said that the SCIMAC guidelines had worked effectively in practice and SCIMAC later this year would publish the report from the independent auditors confirming this. Members agreed that it would be important that the AEBC’s report considered the available evidence for how likely it was that farmers would abide by guidelines or mandated protocols for growing GM crops.

10. Dr Turner explained that the intellectual property holder (for GM varieties this would be the consent holder, an agricultural biotechnology company) could contractually require farmers to follow guidelines for growing the crop. The consent holders could delegate oversight of the distribution of the seed through the British Society of Plant Breeders (BSPB) who would in turn manage the merchant trade, as BSPB did for a wide variety of conventional crops. Whether or not BSPB undertook this, the important point was that there was provision for industry to require farmers to abide by coexistence protocols and to refuse to supply farmers who did not do so.

Discussion

Scope and context

11. Several Members expressed concern over the proposed scope of the report. Limiting the consideration of the report to the first generation of GM crops (i.e. those likely to be authorised first for possible commercial growing) and examining these on a case-by-case basis risked missing strategic issues of principle. If time constraints for producing the report were limiting the number of crops covered then the report should clearly state this. It was agreed that it would be useful to look ahead in the report to other GM crops on the horizon, particularly wheat and potatoes. Crops should be considered case-by-case, but it was agreed that this should not prevent a strategic analysis of the generic issues raised and an analysis of the applicability or otherwise of possible solutions in the future. The AEBC should aim to set out the strategic framework on which solutions might be based. The report needed to make clear where particular coexistence provisions were crop-specific and where they were generic, so that the report was firmly grounded in practical realities - but without losing the broad strategic perspective.

12. The tone of the paper for the meeting seemed too confident about the solution, some Members thought. It was in danger of implying that arrangements could easily be reversed if circumstances changed. The report needed to acknowledge that the pattern set for the first generation of GM crops would be highly significant for future crops. The Commission needed to think through the implications of possible commercialisation in a broader political context and not limit itself to the legal and technical aspects. By limiting the report to the “farm gate” other problems with AP that may occur, such as with imports and handling further up the production line, would not be addressed. The implications of any such problems for coexistence on the farm needed to be covered and the report should clearly state why it was not considering in depth the rest of the supply chain and consumer choice issues at the retail end.

13. It was agreed that discussion of possible coexistence of GM non-food crops such as those that could be used to produce pharmaceuticals or bio fuels should be looked at in a separate piece of work that the Commission might take forward after this report, as these crops did raise different issues compared to food crops. The intention to look later at these crops would be referred to in passing in the report.

Factors relevant to evaluating possible solutions

14. The point was made in discussion that consumer confidence surrounding choice was genuine and would depend on whether concerned consumers perceived the non-GM and organic AP standards could be guaranteed under coexistence and whether such standards could be verified. If the monitoring and evaluating required to guarantee the standards was entirely governed by industry then – rightly or wrongly - it was likely that consumer confidence would be difficult to achieve. The report needed to think carefully about how standards would be monitored and put forward realistic proposals to ensure public confidence in any scheme.

15. Members discussed the rate of take-up of GM crops following possible commercialisation. Members did not expect individual farmers to switch completely to GM. Continuous planting of the same crop was not sustainable and farmers needed a range of crops for rotation, although it may be that a farmer would plant entirely GM varieties of a particular crop (e.g. oilseed rape) in any one year, assuming the farmer had become confident that the GM crop would deliver benefits on his or her farm. Members expected there would be a transitional phase before GM growing became widespread, which should allow the details of any coexistence arrangements to be tested and refined in practice. The other important information needed for predicting the extent of any future coexistence problems in the medium-term was Government and industry targets for increased organic production in the UK of relevant crops and also trends in conventional non-GM cultivation of these crops.

16. Members noted that the current level of reliable detectability of adventitious presence was in effect 0.1% (lower levels could be detected but limitations on effective sampling of crops for testing suggested that setting a lower level was impracticable). Some Members believed that consumers expected ‘zero’ and at present supermarkets were working to ‘below 0.1%’ as a de facto ‘zero’, as did the principal UK organic certifiers (although it needed to be borne in mind that 0.1% was not a positive threshold but rather a surrogate for zero tolerance in organic products). Some Members felt the report said too little on this. The sub-group had noted that it seemed impossible to guarantee achieving 0.1% using separation distances in certain circumstances, for some crops. Members agreed that the report should state this.

17. Members asked the sub-group to clarify how probable it was that detectability would improve below 0.1%. It was noted that accuracy depended not just on the test itself but also, critically for crops, on sampling. Improvements may be made but the limitations on sampling suggested that it was highly improbable that the level of confidence could approach 0%. Members noted that if levels of confidence did improve below 0.1%, supermarkets and organic bodies might reduce their thresholds too.

18. Several Members asked whether the data about purity in seed crops, on which in turn some of the data about separation distances was based, was reliable. Seed crop samples had been previously tested on the basis of phenotype and not genotype. This had been far more practical as it was impossible to take samples of every crop back to the laboratory for genotypic testing, and in any case molecular analytic techniques had only relatively recently become available. Some Members thought that phenotypic testing had proved reliable in determining purity levels. Moreover, the use of isoenzyme analysis meant there had been a much more accurate prediction of genotype in a fair range of cases. The sub-group was asked to address in the report the questions of whether the existing data was reliable; and whether measures used in seed production were substantively different to what could be expected to apply in crop production (if so, this could cast doubt on the replicability of AP levels in the latter based on data from the former).

19. The report at present only looked at two thresholds. Should the subgroup consider the possibility of achieving levels between 0.9% and 0.1%? Some Members commented that if coexistence were not always possible at a threshold of 0.1% the Government would be faced with a dilemma. It had a policy of promoting organic agriculture. But it could not legally ban GM crops. Indeed, Government policy of promoting renewable energy sources could mean in the future that Government would want to promote some GM varieties of beet, rape and possibly other crops for bio fuel production. Some Members took the view that the AEBC needed to be realistic and examine other levels which might be a compromise and more easily achievable than 0.1%, while making clear the limitations on the confidence limits on the data available in coming to any conclusions. Other Members felt that it was not for the AEBC to negotiate threshold levels. It should simply state the implications of different levels and set out where the difficult political judgements for Government lay.

20. The Chair summarised this part of the discussion by stating that the report should note clearly that Government policies potentially pulled in different directions. The AEBC had agreed points (a), (b) and (d) in the decisions on scope in AEBC/03/04. The report should set out the different options around each crop at different threshold levels, while taking a strategic and broad view of the context of coexistence, recognising that we were looking at a framework of options, and avoiding underplaying the possible problems and giving a sense that the solution was predetermined. The report should consider both short-term and long-term prospects for coexistence. Future crops might raise different problems and may therefore require different options for solutions. The limitations to “future-proofing” the report’s recommendations in what was necessarily uncharted territory, albeit with parallels in existing agricultural production, should be made clear in the report.

Options

21. It was noted that “practicable” encompassed not only what was achievable on the farm but also measures of evaluating and managing a possible protocol. The note on the emerging thinking appeared to suggest that the options of protocols looked like a foregone conclusion. There should be more exploration of the “middle ground” and examine other scenarios e.g. the use of planning controls. It might also be possible to suggest enhancing existing crop assurance schemes that at present define certain farming methods. The Chair confirmed that the report should not present any particular option as a closed case and explore more fully the range of options in the middle ground.

Protocols

22. The use of protocols could provide a basis for determining liability in relation to economic loss. Use of protocols underpinned the thinking of the liability sub-group that cooperation and negotiation was preferable to reliance on litigation. The Commission needed to clearly set out the advantages and disadvantages of a voluntary or statutory protocol in its advice in relation to the question of liability and in the wider context of public confidence.

23. It would be necessary for the suggestion of a supervising body to be thoroughly explored. The role of the body would need to be clearly defined. This would depend on how much of the protocol was statutory and how much voluntary. Governance of the protocol would be key in ensuring consumer confidence and preserving choice. An independent stakeholder supervisory body could have an important role, especially if it was recommended that industry took responsibility for making a system of protocols work. Similarly, further thought was needed on how to take forward monitoring and auditing the system.

24. The sub-group had looked at parallel requirements in farm assurance schemes. Coexistence protocols might constitute a new assurance scheme to develop or build upon existing ones. The scheme could be authorised by an independent statutory body that would monitor the way any scheme was working. This idea could be tested in the forthcoming stakeholder seminar where the group would be able to ascertain the extent to which this approach was acceptable to stakeholders. Several Members stressed that any supervising body must have strong representation from outside the industry. The Chair confirmed that this idea should be incorporated into the draft report.

25. Commission members discussed whether or not environmental factors should be included within the protocol and the extent to which this might be possible. It was agreed that the report should emphasise this question and how possible management measures could lead to an increase in biodiversity, and that this should be explored thoroughly in the stakeholder seminar.

Next steps

26. Dr Hails summarised six broad areas for further work in addition to the points on the scope and context of the report, summarised earlier by the Chair: There were also a number of detailed points made in the discussion that the secretariat would take into account in developing the report. The secretariat would circulate to all AEBC members the paper that would be prepared for the sub-group’s stakeholder seminar on 28 April.

27. The Chair invited the sub-group and secretariat to take forward this work and bring a draft report to the May AEBC meeting.

Action: secretariat and sub-group

Any other business

28. There was none.

AEBC secretariat
April 2003