AGRICULTURE AND
ENVIRONMENT BIOTECHNOLOGY COMMISSION
HORIZON SCANNING SUB-GROUP
NOTE OF A MEETING ON 22 JANUARY 2002
AT 10.30AM AT ALBANY HOUSE, PETTY
FRANCE, LONDON SW1
Note: These are the views of the
sub-group, not necessarily those of the full Commission
Julie Hill (Convenor)
ChiChi Iweajunwa
Derek Langslow
Roger Turner
Anne Packer (Secretariat)
1. None – all members were present
Previous meeting
2. The draft minutes of the previous meeting were agreed
and would be put on the website.
Relative
significance of developments described in the table.
3. Julie Hill said that one of the main purposes of the
meeting was to debate the relative significance of the items in the table. This would enable the secretariat to
re-order the material after the meeting, and to draft the analysis sections
that cover possible concerns and benefits etc.
From these would come the conclusions of the study and suggestions for
future priorities for AEBC work. This
would fulfil the study’s task as being to inform the future Work Plan. Members would also want to draw together the
threads emerging from the December full Commission discussions.
4. Julie reported that she, Roger Turner, Ed Dart and
Anne Packer had met earlier in the month.
As a result of that meeting, Anne had changed the format of the table to
having just two columns (without deleting any of the material), and
incorporated some updated information, and Ed Dart had drafted two notes –
these were with members’ papers for the current meeting. One note was on mutation breeding, to draw
on in the draft study as a biotechnology technique to compare with genetic
engineering. The second was a possible
introduction to the table as an expansion of paragraph 65 in the December AEBC
paper (AEBC/01/22). Roger Turner was
undertaking further work on the evolving structure of the industry, on which he
would report during the meeting - text would then be added to the draft.
5. Their initial conclusions at that discussion had been
that there were no obvious gaps in the coverage of the table, but it would be
useful to discuss this and identify any gaps.
There was still further work to be done, particularly:
·
to try to order the
information by the developments’ nearness to reality; and
·
to try to order by the
extent of relevance to UK environment and agriculture
They
had also discussed how to ensure that the table could be kept up to date by
capturing new developments as they came along.
It was hoped that a considerable amount of this could be done within the
Secretariat, perhaps by a new member of staff.
6. After today’s meeting, the secretariat would:
·
update the table
·
draft/redraft the
analysis sections
·
link the study to
proposals for the Work Plan -drafting this section
·
do background work eg
adding/checking references where needed and completing the other annexes,
including the glossary.
7. In discussion, members agreed that the revised format
of the table made it easier to read and use.
8. Members identified some key lessons from the table as
being:
·
The huge variety of
work going on and that work is aimed at a wide range of targets with a wide
range of characteristics – it was hard to identify a unifying theme.
·
A significant number of products being developed of relevance to the developing world. These raised issues of management, including
the adequacy of regulation and implementation of regulation; the ability to
deal with unpredictable climatic variation, particularly flooding; and the
impact on trade.
·
The need to emphasise
the potential significance of work on trees.
There were potential benefits eg less polluting processes for
paper-making, production of biomass uel, alongside concerns about cross-pollination with native species; and changes in land-use.
·
The need to emphasise
the potential significance of work on grasses (as animal feed and in non-food
uses), particularly because of concerns about cross-pollination with native
species.
·
It might seem
surprising that there weren’t more types of insect resistance being
developed. In discussion it was
clarified that there were three types of insecticidal genes under investigation
for GM strategies (these were in the table: the BT family, Avidin and Photorhabdus
luminescens). However, it was pointed
out that only 6 or so families of chemical insecticides had ever been
discovered, indicating that there were only a few available modes of action for
killing insects.
·
It might seem
surprising there wasn’t more work on fungal resistance, but this was because it
was very difficult for a number of reasons - the natural ability of the
pathogen to change, the complexity of toxicology testing for the food product,
but mainly because resistance would
involve polygenic (more than one gene) changes – single genes don’t provide
sufficient protection. Substantial
improvements in fungal resistance have been made by conventional plant breeding
techniques which exploited resistance mechanisms in closely related species.
·
It might also seem
surprising that there wasn’t even more work on stress tolerance, and the group
would want to include all work going on in this area – salt resistance in
tomatoes and aluminium tolerance in maize were among items already
covered. There was CSIRO work on salt
tolerant grass for sheep farming in Australia.
Work on viruses had been successful eg for papaya in Hawaii.
·
There seemed a
dichotomy within Governments between encouraging work on biotechnology –
encouraging enterprise – while also putting in rigid environmental controls –
which discouraged it in practice.
However, in discussion, it was agreed that this tended to be how
pluralistic government worked.
9. Julie Hill summarised the main points suggested at
the December full Commission meeting for possible inclusion in a future work
plan, and members discussed possible options:
·
Work on liability would
be included – noting that this is a major workstream for AEBC which is already
underway.
·
Competitiveness of the
UK biotechnology and agriculture industries in a global context. This might be a study of impacts on
competitiveness from decisions made on biotechnology, for example the
competitiveness of the UK farming industry and
companies throughout the food chain; biotechnology companies; and
research and development facilities.
Allied to this was the development
of protocols (either voluntary or mandatory) for the management of GM
crops (the SCIMAC guidelines on herbicide tolerance is an example), how they might affect the use of the
technology and what indirect benefits they might bring in terms of
environmental management.
Competitiveness was a theme from the scenarios consultation, and
indirectly from the table. The effects
of/need for protocols might come within the liability study since the desire to
reduce liability was likely to be a driver of introducing protocols.
·
The impact of UK and EU
decisions on development and implementation of the technology elsewhere in the
world eg management of developments, protocols and how they work in other
contexts, how relevant are developments, who do they benefit and how are they
regulated? Given several incidents of
unexpected adventitious presence of GM in crops, whether any country, including
the UK, could succeed in being ‘GM free’.
·
The balance between public
and private research. (The group did not develop this theme at the current
meeting but it is already being progressed as an AEBC topic)
·
At the last AEBC
meeting, a member had suggested the Commission might usefully study long-term
changes in patterns of land use, including alternative crops. The sub-group felt that it might be hard to
separate out land use from other aspects of environment and agricultural
practices. Land use would be determined
not just by available technologies, but by policies bearing on rural
development, including agricultural subsidy regimes (with CAP a crucial
element), the state of agricultural trade, and the social dimensions of rural
development policy. Much would depend
on what a country such as the UK (and its devolved administrations) was/were
aiming at. A group member suggested
that AEBC might look at the commonality of the visions for the future of
agriculture. The Policy Commission would
be reporting soon for England and there were already vision papers for Scotland
and Northern Ireland for example. Areas
of focus could be whether the visions had a common theme and whether they gave
a vision for the role of new biotechnologies within agriculture.
·
Sub-group members
suggested that in addition to areas identified before, AEBC could do useful
work on comparative impacts on the environment of different (GM and non-GM
management regimes – the environmental ‘footprints’ of different regimes. For example crop and animal pests and diseases
and alternative ways of managing them Julie Hill noted that this might have
parallels with the AEBC work on the Farm Scale Evaluations, which focussed on
herbicide tolerance and weed management, by shifting the focus to look at pest
and disease management. This
‘comparative footprint’ approach might also be a way of addressing the area of
‘diffuse long-term impacts on the environment’, which was suggested by one
Commission member during the discussion of the horizon-scanning study at the
December meeting.
10. Julie Hill noted that it would be important to frame
proposed work with AEBC’s remit clearly in mind.
11. In terms of updating:
·
the current ISAAA
summary raised some points to add;
·
some references needed
adding to the table;
·
the information on
animals needed to be more specific, to remove speculative material, and to
highlight what were the major issues.
The group would liase with the animals and biotechnology group on what
to put in. Possible additions included more on insects
and fish for transboundary effects – identifying who was doing what work and
where. The study would note that work
on xenotransplantation was being dealt with in depth by others, and that little
GM work was underway with agricultural animals.
·
for crops not grown in
the UK there was still UK relevance in that the products may well be imported
to the UK in goods and foodstuffs, even though there was no direct environmental impact;
·
the tables would be
ordered with crops that might be grown in the UK at the top, and to give a
sense of time perspective, items in the table would be ordered and identified
where possible by (C) if they were commercialised, (F) if they were in field
trials and (R) if they were in research labs.
Roger Turner and Ed Dart would be able to help with this.
·
‘corn’ would be
replaced by ‘maize’ throughout the table where appropriate
·
Roger Turner would let
the secretariat have the technical name for ‘Take all’
Fusarium
is a fungus, which causes problems but is not in the table. No one was working on fusarium resistance
per se, so it was a potential target rather than an actual to go in the
table.
12. Julie Hill asked members to let the secretariat have
further individual comments on the table in writing.
13. Roger Turner circulated a note on his work so far,
which he would revise in the light of further work he planned and suggestions
from members. His comparisons were
between 1982 and 2002. Some of the
issues raised were about competition and control in markets.
14. Some comparative information might prove difficult to
obtain. Table 3 would include seeds as
well as agro-chemicals, and include perspective on relative sizes of sectors; Roger
Turner would extend the information on turnover, aiming eg to include an
indication of proportions of money which is earned in the UK, proportions which
are agriculture related, proportions for seeds; if possible he would find
information on what for particular crops is the concentration of markets; he
would seek information on vertical integration control and packages which
impact on the amount of competition in the market. A study by John Marsh on agricultural inputs and the Nuffield
biotechnology report might provide some of this information. He would let the secretariat have details of
a book by Diana Montagu on the history of agricultural trading, which might be
of interest to members.
15. Members agreed that it might be useful for the group
to meet industry – probably companies one at a time – after the next full AEBC
meeting. It would be useful to get the
full Commission’s views on this. This
would be to elaborate the suggestions for work in the work plan – a form of
consultation on the work plan and also gathering information.
Briefing notes
16. The secretariat would use Ed Dart’s notes in revising
the draft study, and some of the points would also go into the earlier analysis
sections. The note on mutation breeding
would be useful background about a non-GM novel breeding technique: a classic
example of a technique in conventional breeding for reaching the same outcomes
as genetic modification.
17. The next meeting, on Tuesday 19 February, would now
be held later: from noon until 4pm.
Derek Langslow and Roger Turner would probably not now be able to attend
that day, but would provide comments before the meeting on the next drafts,
which would include the table, analysis and draft work plan. (Publicity of the study would be for
consideration at a later stage.)
18. With input from members, Anne Packer would draft
those papers, and circulate them in the week beginning 11 February.
19. A further sub-group meeting date was arranged for
Monday 25 March, from 10.30am to 3.30pm.
AEBC Secretariat
January 2002
