AGRICULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT BIOTECHNOLOGY COMMISSION

TWENTIETH MEETING

25 SEPTEMBER 2003

THE HOLIDAY INN, VICTORIA
LONDON SW1V 1QA

MINUTES OF MEETING

Members

Professor Malcolm Grant (Chair)
Ms Julie Hill (Deputy Chair)
Ms Anna Bradley
Ms Helen Browning
Dr. David Buckeridge
Dr. Dave Carmichael
Professor Phil Dale
Dr. Ed Dart
Dr. Matthew Freeman
Professor Robin Grove-White
Dr. Rosie Hails
Ms Judith Hann
Professor Jeff Maxwell
Dr. Sue Mayer 
Dr. Paul Rylott
Ms Justine Thornton

Secretariat

Mr. Richard Abel
Dr. Paul van Heyningen
Mr. Matthew Hughes
Miss Emma Knox
Mr. Craig Johnson
Mrs. Laura McMahon
Mr. Pat Wilson

THE MEETING WAS CONDUCTED IN PUBLIC SESSION

Apologies for Absence

1. Apologies had been received from Mr. John Gilliland, Dr. Derek Langslow and Ms Chi Chi Iweajunwa.

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

Minutes of the previous meeting

3. The Chair explained that the draft minutes of the meeting on the 9/10th July had been circulated by the secretariat. It was noted that Dr. Hails had been omitted from the list of those present and subject to this being rectified, Members confirmed the minutes as a correct record and agreed to their being posted on the AEBC website as such. 

Matters of Report

4. Dr. Roger Turner had left the Commission on 31 July. The Chair took the opportunity to thank him for the hard work and contributions that he had given to the AEBC since its inception in June 2000. He would write to Dr Turner to convey Members’ best wishes. 

GM Nation? The public debate

5. The GM public debate report was published on 24th September. Entitled GM Nation? The findings of the public debate, it detailed seven key messages arising from the debate. Government had undertaken to respond formally to the report. The report was available on line on the GM Nation? website (www.gmnation.org) or through a publications hotline (0870 1502500, asking for the report by title and the URN number 03/1292).

6. The Chair of the Steering Board, Professor Grant, would be appearing before the Efra select committee on 22nd October 2003 to answer questions on the conduct of the public debate. The Select Committee expected to publish a brief report afterwards with its findings. 

FSE Results

7. The long-awaited first tranche of the Farm-Scale Evaluations (FSE) results for maize, beet and spring oilseed rape were due to be published on 16th October. There would be two presentations by the Scientific Steering Committee and research team at the Royal Institution on 16th October and the evening of the 28th October. AEBC Members had been invited by Defra to attend the presentations. Members should inform the secretariat if they wished to be present.

Action: Members 

Meetings/conferences

8. The joint Innogen/AEBC conference would take place on 13 November 2003 in Edinburgh. The event would aim to:

(i) identify the main messages emerging from the GM dialogue;
(ii) identify the key considerations for future decision-making on GM crops based on balancing stakeholders’ interests and values;
(iii) consider what lessons can be learned for future decision-making on the possible introduction of new technologies.

9. It would draw upon the extensive discussions and evidence from the public debate, the science review and the study carried out by the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit.

10. Denmark would be hosting an EU-wide conference on coexistence between GM and non-GM agriculture on 13 and 14 November 2003. Professor Phil Dale would be attending and agreed to report back to the Commission on the discussions.

11. Professor Malcolm Grant and Dr. Sue Mayer had been asked to speak at a symposium (hosted by UCL Centre for Biosciences) on Public Engagement with Science, with the main focus being on the “politics of the process”. The date for this is 5/6th November 2003.

12. Professor Malcolm Grant had also been invited to speak at the Guardian conference on “GM in Britain – what way forward?” (27th November). This conference would explore the context in which decisions about GM foods are to be made.

EU/International developments

13. The Cartagena Protocol came into force on 11 September 2003. The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety is the first Protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity agreed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. It aims to ensure an "adequate level of protection in the field of the safe transfer, handling and use of GMOs resulting from modern biotechnology that may have adverse effects on the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, taking also into account risks to human health, and specifically focusing on transboundary movements". The Protocol introduces two main new procedures. The first requires notification to, and agreement of, the importing country before the export of a GMO (for example a seed) intended for deliberate introduction into the environment may proceed. The second, for GMOs for food, feed or for processing, enables the importing country to declare, via a 'Biosafety Clearing House', that it wishes to take a decision based on risk assessment information before agreeing to accept an import.

14. On 2 September, the European Commission vetoed attempts by the Austrian region of Upper Austria to declare itself a GM crop-free zone, in a ruling rejecting Austrian claims for a derogation from the Deliberate Release Directive. Austria believed that this was justified on the grounds that coexistence measures have not yet been fully developed, but the European Commission ruled that the evidence presented was inadequate to justify that claim.

15. A week later, the European Court of Justice ruled that Italy’s grounds for banning food derived from GM maize grain (Bt-11 and MON 810) were unjustified, as they were not based on specific data. At the same time, however, the Court upheld the right of governments to impose a ban on substances that pose a threat to health. This particular case would now go back to the Italian courts for a final ruling.

New secretariat members

16. Two new members to the Secretariat team had joined in August. Dr. Paul van Heyningen had taken over as deputy secretary from Anne Packer and would be responsible for taking forward the preliminary work on new work topics on which the Commission will be focussing. Dr. van Heyningen would be on loan from Defra for two years, and recently returned from a secondment to the European Commission. Craig Johnson had taken over from Andrea Bovolenta and joined the Secretariat from the Prison Service.


Coexistence and liability

Land management information for farmers

17. Dr. David Buckeridge gave a short presentation on the Land Management Information System (LaMIS). The new initiative would be piloted for six months in Hampshire, the Sussex Downs and the North York National Parks between October 2003 and March 2004. 

18. LaMIS would provide an online information system for farmers, land managers, their agents and advisers and allow easy access to public information about land, both nationally and locally. One of its main aims was to support informed decision-making and ease the process of applying for funding by highlighting opportunities and giving visibility to management plans. It had been devised for a number of reasons, including agri-environment reviews, assisting in biodiversity action plans and to support rural businesses. Funding for the project had been received from Defra, the Countryside Agency, South East England Development Agency (SEEDA), English National Parks Authority and local government. 

19. The pilot project used aerial photography, Ordnance Survey mapping and a “what’s in this field” analysis. Those using the service would be able to access detailed information on biodiversity, possible historical interests, public access rights and other key facts including stewardship preservations.

20. Dr. Buckeridge explained how the system might be developed to provide a planning tool to check that GM and non-GM crops were sufficiently isolated to achieve permitted thresholds. It would be possible to use on-line drawing and measuring tools to determine distances between neighbouring fields for example and even identify farm types such as GM users or organic growers, all of which could provide a basis for dialogue and co-operation planning between farmers. 

21. Members could see the benefits of such a system and its long-term potential but concern was expressed that it might be difficult for some small-scale farmers who were not computer literate to use easily; and that maintaining a full cropping database could be costly if the input of annual cropping data and other vital information needed to be centrally controlled. It was also noted that at present there was no data on the soil for a particular field or area which would perhaps prove limiting to the tool in time (although not in respect of its use to facilitate coexistence). It was agreed that reference should be made to the LaMIS project in the AEBC report on coexistence and liability highlighting its potential as a management information tool.

Fourth draft of AEBC coexistence and liability report

22. The Chair outlined the areas of the report where a general consensus among Members had been reached. Most Members were reasonably satisfied with the content in Parts 1 and 2.1, subject to some detailed points, although it was agreed that more evidence should be included from the recent publications of the Science Review, the Economic Review by the Prime Minister’s strategy unit and the GM Nation? report. More should also be explained on consumer choice and what was actually meant by this and how it could be delivered.

23. Sections 2.2 – 2.5 needed some further development. The Chair recognised that many Members of the Commission had differing views on how a possible coexistence regime might be implemented and managed and what measures for compensation may be necessary. He suggested that the way forward was for the Commission to acknowledge these differences and set out quite clearly where there was agreement and when opinion differed, what options were available and the implications of each. If this was the most acceptable approach to all, then the report needed to be clearly structured so that there would be no confusion about where there was agreement among AEBC members, where there were differences, what was being recommended and why, and where there were a number of different options. The aim where there was not consensus would be to have as far as possible a commonly agreed analysis among members on the merits and demerits and the implications of different options.

24. The discussion at the meeting, as in the draft report, did not assume that GM crop cultivation would necessarily go ahead. There was discussion around the implementation of an initial introductory period of GM crop cultivation, were commercialisation to take place. During this period whether or not crop management protocols and other measures could successfully deliver coexistence would be fully assessed and adjusted measures for improvement taken if necessary. All members agreed that there should be coexistence rules and that there should be an initial introductory period of some kind. A majority thought these requirements should be statutory. 

25. The thresholds for Adventitious Presence (AP) that should be aimed for were discussed. All members agreed that there should be rules to achieve coexistence at 0.9% for those farmers working to that statutory threshold. A majority of Members were of the view that any coexistence regime should also be required to successfully deliver an AP threshold of 0.1%, at least for those farmers who wished to work to this threshold, although others felt that this should be left more open and “as low a level as possible” within measures that would be practicable for all should be sought. A number of Members felt that since 0.9% would be the threshold set within EU legislation for traceability and labelling then this was what should be concentrated on and any lower threshold should not impose an undue burden on a GM farmer or lead to financial liability. 

26. The possibility of using the respective separation distances for 0.1% and 0.9% in the SCIMAC guidelines as the basis for crop management protocols were commercial growing to proceed was also raised. 

27. Most Members felt there would be a need for some statutory underpinning of a coexistence regime, at least during any initial period.

28. The issue of economic compensation for breaches of one or more thresholds was also discussed. Most Members thought that insurance was the best option, but noted that it was unavailable at present. All Members agreed that in the absence of insurance there should be other arrangements for compensation for non-GM farmers suffering economic loss as a result of breaches of the 0.9% threshold. There were differences of view about who should fund such compensation. The principal options were Government; consent-holders and/or other parts of the agricultural supply industry, or a combination of both; or farmers through a levy on all combinable crops. 

29. A majority of Members at the meeting thought that there should also be compensation available to non-GM farmers for economic loss as a consequence of breach of the 0.1% threshold. As with 0.9%, there were a variety of views on how that should be funded, and for some Members compensation would only be justified if funding was from a particular source. The forthcoming report would set out the various options and their implications.

30. The Chair brought this section of the meeting to a close by summing up the options discussed for a managed introductory period and asked the secretariat to incorporate the substance and outcome of Members’ detailed discussions into a further draft of the report which would be circulated as soon as possible. Any further or detailed points Members had could be sent in advance to the secretariat following the meeting.

31. Part 3 of the report, which looks at environmental liability, needed to be updated in the light of recent developments on the European Draft Directive on environmental liability. This section accordingly was not discussed substantively at the meeting. The Chair would work with the Secretariat in redrafting it for circulation with the other revised part of the report 

Action: Secretariat; Members to send in further comments

New work programme for the AEBC

32. Unfortunately there was insufficient time to discuss the future work streams and the scoping papers AEBC/03/09 and AEBC/03/10. The Deputy Chair asked all Members to forward their thoughts on these and whether the topics chosen from the Work Plan were still relevant or if others should take priority. If the two topics of environmental footprints and transboundary regulation were the areas to which the AEBC should turn their attention next, Members were asked to comment specifically on the papers that had been prepared for the meeting in order that the secretariat and Deputy Chair could take these forward before the Commission meeting in December.

Action: Members

Action: Deputy Chair and secretariat.

The meeting closed at 16.45 


AEBC secretariat
September 2003