Volume 2

The segregation of genetically modified foods : third report / Agriculture Committee.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Agriculture Committee.
Date:
[2000], ©2000
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: The segregation of genetically modified foods : third report / Agriculture Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [Chairman Cont] still are very much in the learning mode, we wish to know where this technology is going, how we can best use it and to inform the farmers who form our membership of that as we go along. 7. You seem to be an organisation which is actually proselytising for GM technology in the UK, that is how it comes across to me, certainly; are you proselytising for GM technology, and if you are not who is, who is actually driving the debate in the UK, do you think? (Dr Turner) I do not think I would use the word proselytising, I think, as I said earlier, we are trying to give a calm, measured view of the benefits that those crops have. I think individual consent holders, who own the intellectual property, they are the people who, if you like, to use your word, proselytise on behalf of their individual varieties, the individual merits of their technology. We are distanced from that, saying we recognise there could be great benefits for agriculture, in the widest sense, the environment, the economics and the farming processes. 8. So do you have any sense of where the debate is being driven from, by individuals, companies, organisations? (Dr Turner) You mean, from an industrial point of view? 9. Yes, from an industrial point of view? (Dr Turner) I think, as I said earlier, they are from the companies that are involved in developing that technology, they are the big, responsible multinational organisations. 10. Responsible, in the sense of technical responsibility? (Dr Turner) No; responsible in the sense of all things. I think it is fashionable these days to knock multinationals, as though they were some evil force; they are not. Companies only get to grow and be big and profitable if they actually persuade the public that they are doing responsible things and selling good products. 11. Let us look in detail at your guidelines. Now your guidelines, which I have got here, for growing herbicide-tolerant, genetically modified crops, seem very detailed, up until the moment when the product actually leaves the farm. Can you think of any parallels elsewhere in industry for that sort of approach? (Dr Turner) Yes. We based the guidelines on the whole of the certified seed industry that has served agriculture very well for the last 35 years. But a good example within that would be malt and malting barley. There is a crop that is grown for a specific market, it is identity preserved. The variety will have characteristics that are going to be sought by maltsters and brewers, and whisky. And that whole thing is tended all the way from the day the bag goes from the breeder’s establishment into the farmer’s field, the crop is harvested, it goes into the transport system, moves to the maltster, all the way through. It is the variety that is the important thing and not the crop. 12. It has not been segregated, it has been identity- preserved? (Dr Turner) Yes. 13. I would like you just to explain, for the record, the difference between those two concepts? (Dr Turner) Identity preservation, from my perspective, is because the crop will have value, and therefore it is being preserved to retain and enhance that value; it is not going to be dumped on the farm floor, mixed in with something else and sold as grain, sugar, oil, it is going to go as a valuable product. So that is the key difference between identity preservation and segregation, and segregation can be for a multitude of reasons. Many people think about segregation because “it is nasty”, or as we see identity preservation, as I said, enhancing and adding value to the farmer’s products. (Dr Carmichael) An example of segregation would be high erucic acid oilseed rape, where it is necessary to segregate that from the low glucosinolate rapes; and in that case it is segregated for very obvious reasons all the way down the line, right through to the end user. That is segregation. 14. The issue we are looking at here is whether it is possible to identity-preserve commodities where there is no consumer characteristic at stake which attracts an added value. And all the evidence we have had suggests that there will be GM technologies in the future, we are aware of them, that will deliver identifiable consumer or processor benefits, of one kind or another, in terms of the characteristic of the crop; their identity preservation will be key to maintaining the value of that crop. But the issue is whether or not you actually can identity-preserve, economically, for the bulk commodities, like soya, is it not; so, clearly, there are costs implied in following your guidelines? Is it possible to apply these guidelines without suitable premiums for the farmers who grow the varieties? (Dr Carmichael) There is bound to be a premium somewhere along the line, whether you wanted a premium for crops without any GM, or a premium for the genetically modified crop; there is bound to be a form of premium, whether it is consumer acceptability, marketability, or whatever. So the premium need not necessarily be financial, but it could be increased marketability, it could be an increase in niche marketing abilities, and at this time those are very important to the farmer. And the question of identity preservation is not a difficult one for the majority of farmers to address, that is one of the reasons why the guidelines were developed in the way they were; we have been doing that for 30 years with seed crops, we can continue to do it. 15. Is it not likely that the farmers who choose to continue to grow non-GM crops will actually have to bear the cost of identity preservation because their neighbours or competitors are growing GM crops; does that seem fair? (Dr Carmichael) J do not see why there should be an additional cost to them, because we are very carefully separating GM from non-GM crops by very well defined distances, and the distances have been defined based on our experience with the seed industry for over 40 years, so I cannot see there necessarily being an add-on cost for the non-GM crop grower. 16. So identity preservation does not cost anything?