AGRICULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT BIOTECHNOLOGY COMMISSION

TWENTY-EIGHTH COMMISSION MEETING

21ST MARCH 2005

WESTMINSTER BOATING BASE, LONDON

Draft MINUTES

1. The Chair welcomed everyone to the Commission’s twenty-eighth and last meeting. Apologies had been received from John Gilliland, Ed Dart and Jeff Maxwell.



2. The minutes of the last Commission meeting had been finalised with all comments incorporated into them. The Commission agreed they were an accurate record of proceedings.


Matters of Report

3. The detailed allocation of the science budget set in the 2004 Spending Review had been announced on 7 March 2005. This had increased funding for biotechnology to £1bn over three years, although it was noted that this was funding for the BBSRC and therefore wider than just biotechnology.



4. The Hampton Review on regulatory inspections and enforcement had been published on 16 March 2005. It included a recommendation to consolidate 31 of the 63 national regulators into just seven bodies. It was noted that this new regulatory framework might have implications for where the functions of the AEBC were to be placed in future.



5. The Council for Science and Technology had published a short report on public engagement in science and technology on 17 March. The report referred to GM Nation? and previous AEBC work, and was relevant to the current workstream on Research Agendas workstream.


Future of the AEBC

6. The Chair announced that he had received a joint letter from the Secretaries of State Margaret Beckett and Patricia Hewitt and this had been circulated to Commission Members. This was Government’s interim response to the review of the AEBC with an aim to provide the full response by the end of March.



7. In brief, the letter thanked the AEBC for their work, stated that there was now agreement that the AEBC should be wound up, and asked for confirmation that the Commission’s work would be completed by the end of April 2005. Government was still considering how aspects of the Commission’s legacy could be taken on by existing bodies, but the letter confirmed the intent to establish additional capacity for independent advice on the environmental impacts of agriculture. The Sustainable Development Commission and others had been consulted about this. Additionally, the letter noted that there was a new horizon scanning capacity in Government and increased funding for biotechnology and social science. A shift towards public engagement and dialogue on science related policy issues was also highlighted.



8. The Chair then invited officials from OST, Defra and SEERAD for comments:



9. Judy Britton (OST) explained that this was only an interim response and therefore she could not add many further comments. However she noted that there has been significant work in the area of public engagement in central Government. It could not as yet be confirmed whether Government could commit to all the recommendations in the CST report but the general philosophy would be adhered to.



10. Linda Smith (Defra) noted that the Secretary of State Margaret Beckett wished to highlight how sustainable agriculture would be taken forward and how biotechnology would fit into this. The full response would provide more details on this.



11. When asked about how work on coexistence was being taken forward, Linda said that Defra was using the AEBC’s Coexistence and Liability report as a basis for their work, but as no companies currently wished to market GM crops in the UK, the timetable for consultation had been put back. No decision had been made on environmental liability, other than actions that would be implemented through the EU directive on environmental liability. As noted in the Secretary of State’s statement, Government would be consulting on economic liability.



12. Alison Douglas (SEERAD) felt that the two key areas were public engagement and sustainable agriculture, and work was currently underway to establish how the different components could be taken up by other bodies. There was however no particular Scottish approach to the response to the AEBC review.


In discussion the following points were raised by Commission members:


13. The Chair stated that he felt the Commission would be able to finish their work by the end of April, but emphasised that it would be critical that the full Government response was available before the end of March. He recognised that Government might not have much capacity for anything after this point due to the potential forthcoming election, and was concerned that the AEBC would be wound up with critical questions remaining unanswered.



14. There was some concern that if the full response was not available before the AEBC was disbanded, the Commission would not have the capacity to respond. Judy Britton assured Members that if this were to occur, arrangements would be made offer some form of support for the AEBC to do so.



15. It was felt that sustainable agriculture and public engagement were not the only factors of the AEBC legacy, and that the response had missed some of the broader issues. The breadth of the representation on the Commission and the processes they had been through in producing their reports had also been important. The AEBC public engagement exercise on Research Agendas workstream had highlighted cynicism about Government decision-making. One way to tackle this was to have breadth of representation. There was also public dissatisfaction around risk assessment and it was felt that a greater range of factors needed to be taken into consideration when weighing up technologies. The AEBC had tried to bring these issues to the public and it was felt that Government needed consider these issues in the legacy of the AEBC to build public confidence. Linda Smith confirmed that the wider issues would be considered in the full response.


Non-Food Agriculture (NFA) workstream

16. Paul van Heyningen (AEBC Secretary) said that the NFA report had been revised to take on board Members comments from the previous meeting. The main points that had been amended were: further details had been added on the methodology; the rationale for using the case studies had been explained; further discussion on participant’s decision making processes were now included; the pervasiveness of broad environmental values in the discussions was highlighted; and the executive summary and conclusions had been strengthened. The report would be published as a Corr Willbourn report with a covering letter from the Commission.


In discussion the following points were raised:


17. The Commission thought the report had accurately captured what the participants had thought, and made a valuable contribution in the field of NFA which Government and NFA bodies needed to follow up.



18. However, the covering letter needed to clarify that the AEBC had commissioned the report but had not had time or resources to fully analyse it. Ideally, this would have been a starting point for the Commission’s deliberations. It was felt that this exercise had highlighted the strengths of a body such as the AEBC. The Commission added value in being able to challenge and conduct a deeper analysis than was possible with simply commissioning experts to carry out a piece of work. Government’s approach to public engagement seemed to focus on increased funding for contracting professionals to carry out such work, but it was important to note that bodies like the AEBC would take things a step further. It was also vital that organisations were equipped to effectively use and take on board the results from such exercises.


This was followed by some general discussion on publication of the AEBC reports:


19. Some felt that it would be useful to have a meeting at the end of April where both reports could be launched together, marking the end of the AEBC. It was also felt that this could be an opportunity to bring together the results from both workstream to highlight the issues around public understanding of science. Others felt that this should not be an AEBC meeting, but an event which would provide an opportunity to discuss with stakeholders and press the context and thinking behind the two projects.



20. However, it was agreed that if there was no such event, the two workstreams should be published separately to avoid confusion. This would be a more low key publication, with the NFA work to be published first, and the Research Agendas work following at the end of April.



21. Pat Wilson (AEBC communications adviser) noted that the end of April would potentially fall into the purdah period before the likely general election. It was unclear whether purdah would apply to the AEBC and that advice would need to be taken on this.


Research Agendas workstream

22. Matthew Freeman reminded Members of the structure of the overall project, which comprised of a number of parallel strands of work and associated papers.



23. Several papers had not been tabled at this meeting but were to be circulated shortly. The information and analysis paper was being revised to take on board major points arising from the consultation, but would not be comprehensively updated. The final reports on the public and stakeholder exercise were currently being redrafted by Opinion Leader Research.



24. The aim of this meeting was to finalise the papers on the analysis of the consultation, soil science case study, plant breeding case study, and the overall conclusions and recommendations paper. The latter 2 papers had been discussed in some detail at the previous Commission meeting and Members comments had been taken on board in the revised drafts.


Soil science case study

25. Paul van Heyningen reported that there had been very positive feedback from the experts that had provided input to this study and that it could potentially be submitted to a soil science or science policy journal. The first half of the paper comprised the history of soil science from Jeff Maxwell, and the second half was a reflection of the discussions with experts. Members had not all had the opportunity to comment on the information in the second half of this paper, although the core group had discussed it and were content with the latest draft.


In discussion the following points were raised:


26. Members were very satisfied with the paper and felt it also reflected the key themes in the overall conclusions paper. It was thought to be very interesting and useful to practitioners as it answered some important questions around soil science. In particular, whether there was a lack of research in this area, or whether the problems were with dissemination of this information. It was felt that in both soil science and plant breeding there was an issue of communication and dissemination of information to those that would use it.



27. The paper had noted that there were still questions to be answered in soil science. Some felt that it was not realistic to expect research into all aspects of soil science, and this should be redrafted to put the issues into a more positive light by recommending that this was a field where there were new questions and priorities arising.


Plant breeding case study


28. Matthew Freeman said that this had been discussed at the last meeting. There were some point where consensus had been reached, but others on which there were differing points of views and the paper had attempted to balance these. In discussion the following points were made:



29. It was felt that there was a serious disconnect between CAP and sustainable agriculture. Government policies did not provide the commercial incentives to farmers or breeders to address the sustainability issues, and this needed to be brought out more strongly in the paper. Companies had the capability to work towards more environmental objectives, but the incentives were not in place to drive them in this direction.



30. It should be recognised in the paper that utilisation of agricultural products was important, and not just the product themselves. For example, high yielding varieties could have sustainability benefits as they could free up land for use towards more environmental objectives.



31. Some felt that there was a tension between the public and private sectors with respect to training plant breeders. If the public sector were to maintain adequate distance from the industry in order to avoid competition, would they be able to train scientists in all the necessary skills, given their restricted area of research? Others felt that the general scientific skills were transferable and equally applicable to public and private sector work. UK training of plant breeders was considered to be the best in the world at one point, but this was no longer the case. This was part of a more general migration away from agricultural science towards more environmental science. Industry was now looking to source their breeders from elsewhere in the world.



32. It was questioned whether all the breeders listed in the table of breeders were actually breeding rather than simply trialling varieties in the UK that had been bred elsewhere.


Analysis of consultation responses

33. Paul van Heyningen explained that this had been briefly amended to include a brief description of the organisations who had been invited to respond to the consultation, and those who had actually provided a response. Members approved this paper without further comment.


Conclusions and recommendations

34. Matthew Freeman explained that this was the final draft of the conclusions and recommendations paper. The supporting information and thinking underlying this paper could be found in the five analysis papers, and conclusions had been cross-referenced to those where appropriate. The five individual papers could also be read as stand alone papers.



35. Paul van Heyningen added that the paper had been discussed in detail at the last AEBC meeting and had been revised to take on board Members comments. This meant changing the drafting of some of the recommendations, but the substance has not changed. An introductory section and summaries had also been added, although there was no executive summary as yet.



36. In discussion each of the conclusions and recommendations were considered. They were all approved subject to the following points:



37. It was felt that Section 2 on introduction and methods should be more than just a description of the processes - the methodology itself had formed an important part of the Commission’s thinking and the paper should be amended to reflect this.



38. Recommendation 3 should be split into two separate conclusions – the first to reflect that technology should not become an end in itself, and another on more systems-based sustainable agriculture studies.



39. It was felt that the influential role of scientists in research agenda setting needed to be further highlighted, and that the conclusions on inter-disciplinary research needed to be strengthened.



40. The discussions on openness and transparency needed to highlight the difference between stakeholders and the public. For example, it was felt that the BBSRC open meeting in February 2005 had been important in enabling scientists who did not usually have a say in BBSRC business to attend a meeting, however, it was not aimed at a general public audience. Public engagement was separate from openness and accountability and was a professional activity.



41. Recommendation 7 on writing a short summary of research projects was agreed. However, it should be clarified to explain that the aim was for researchers to explain the aims of the project and how they related to high-level strategic objectives.



42. The conclusions on public engagement activities needed to make clear that although there was a ‘professional’ component to this work, there was still a responsibility for the sponsors to deliberate the results of such exercises and use them effectively to guide their decision-making.



43. Recommendation 11 on communication of science was agreed, but it was felt that it was too focused on the office of science and technology – science communications organisations also had a responsibility. This had not been a major focus of this project, but was an issue that participants in the public engagement exercise felt strongly about. There was some wider discussion on these issues in which the following points were raised:



44. There was a range of conflated issues in discussion on science communication, e.g. media behaviour, representation of science, the quality of information, the debate in contentious areas of science etc. A range of different organisations had roles and responsibilities in this.



45. The public were sceptical about the media and many studies, including the AEBC’s work on non-food agriculture, had shown they called for independent sources of information. It was also felt that the press sometimes played a campaigning role rather than simply reporting science.



46. The media needed to make a commitment to put science into context and report accurately. Editorial expertise was an important factor in this. In general, there needed to be an increased understanding between scientists and the media.



47. Scientists also had a responsibility to accurately report their findings and not over-exaggerate claims. The research councils were offering media training but there had been limited take up. It was recognised that such activities were time consuming and were unlikely to contribute to a scientists’ career progression. This was felt to be a problem across academia with researchers not feeling responsible for disseminating their information more widely. Therefore, to make real progress it would be necessary to integrate communications issues into scientific culture at an institutional level.



48. Matthew Freeman stated that the paper would be revised to take on board these comments and would be re-circulated for approval for publication at the end of April.


Thanks and close

49. The Chair then thanked Members for their commitment and work with the AEBC for the past year and closed the final meeting at 1.00pm