SIXTEENTH MEETING
THURSDAY 27 FEBRUARY 2003
ROYAL HORTICULTURAL HALLS CONFERENCE CENTRE
LONDON SW1
MINUTES OF MEETING
Papers
AEBC 03/01 Liability for GMOs: Draft working paper for discussion
AEBC 03/02 Update on proposals for forthcoming meetings
AEBC 03/03 Update on work of GM public debate steering board
Present
Professor Malcolm Grant (Chair)
Ms Julie Hill (Deputy Chair)
Ms Helen Browning
Dr Dave Carmichael
Professor Phil Dale
Dr Ed Dart
Dr Matthew Freeman
Professor Robin Grove-White
Ms Judith Hann
Dr Derek Langslow
Professor Jeff Maxwell
Dr Sue Mayer
Ms Justine Thornton
Dr Roger Turner
Secretariat
Mr Richard Abel
Mrs Anne Packer
Mr Pat Wilson
Mrs Laura McMahon
Mr Matt Hughes
Mr Chris Hepworth
Mr Andrea Bovolenta
THE MEETING WAS CONDUCTED IN PUBLIC SESSION
Apologies for Absence
1. Apologies had been received from Ms ChiChi Iweajunwa and Mr John Gilliland.
Introductory matters
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 said that the secretariat had taken on board Members’ comments on the minutes of the December meeting, including amendments after the unconfirmed minutes had been issued prior to the meeting. Members who wanted to see the changes should speak to Richard Abel or Anne Packer after the meeting. Subject to any further comments, the Commission confirmed the minutes as a correct record and agreed to their being posted on the AEBC website as such.
Action: secretariat
Discussion of liability issues: Paper AEBC/02/17
Introduction by liability group convenor
4. Introducing the draft working paper (AEBC/03/01) on liability for GMOs, Justine Thornton described the progress since the previous Commission meeting, including discussion at a sub-group meeting on 26 February. The group was arranging a stakeholder meeting on 8 April, for around 30-40 people, at which the group would outline its current thinking and emerging conclusions. A draft report would be produced for the Commission’s May meeting.
5. The group’s emerging conclusions were outlined in the draft working paper and subsequently refined in a draft note from the convener (tabled at the meeting) following the sub-group meeting the previous day. The emerging conclusions of the group summarised by the convener were as follows.
Environment
6. Social research suggested the public had concerns about the potential for GM crops to cause currently unforeseeable environmental harm. Nonetheless, the group did not plan to recommend introduction of an environmental remediation regime for GM crops alone, because of the similarity of issues raised by a wide range of agricultural and other practices, and because of the difficulties in devising a suitable regime. In coming to this conclusion the group drew some comfort from the wide array of regulatory safeguards and powers available to regulators under EC/2001/18 to take action to prevent any environmental harm specifically associated with a GM crop, subject to regulators having sufficient resources and training. The group would want to draw Government’s attention to the evidence it had heard that the driver for raising environmental standards in other industries employing new technologies, such as nuclear power generation, was strong regulatory provision coupled with an effective inspections regime.
7. Some group members believed that there should be a strengthening of the draft EC environmental liability directive, even though this should not be in respect of GM crops alone. The group had agreed that given the time it had taken and would take to change and agree the EC directive, the directive was not a feasible vehicle for any change in the short term. The group’s recommendation not to have a separate environmental liability regime for GMOs needed to be framed carefully to reflect the different perspectives Members had on this topic. Not all members of the group believed that the wider environmental liability legal regime needed strengthening in this way in respect of GM crops or other crops.
8. The group had nonetheless come to the firm view from that the possible advent in the countryside of a new technology, such as GM crops, should be seized as an opportunity to help promote biodiversity and raise environmental standards in agriculture across the board (but not by means of the EC draft directive). This view stemmed from a recognition that all forms of agriculture had environmental impacts; equally it did not imply that all Members thought that the introduction of GM crops was no different to that of conventional crops. Some Members thought that the nub of the issue was to have credible arrangements in place to allay perceived public concerns about meeting the costs of any unforeseen environmental consequences arising from GM crop cultivation, while acknowledging that a change in EC environmental liability law was not a realistic means to achieve this.
Economics
9. The group expected, on the other hand, to recommend the introduction of GM-specific arrangements to cater for the economic impacts of GM farming on non-GM farming. In doing so, Members were aware that current farming practices had potential to cause economic impacts on one another (for example in production of certified seed) and that by and large farmers had managed to deal with the issues, but they did not consider GM and non-GM farmers could be left to manage co-existence of GM and other crops these issues by local cooperation alone, without there being a clear understanding of where farmers would stand if a problem over AP arose.
10. The group’s view was that it would be undesirable to do no forward planning and simply leave farmers to revert to law if there was a problem. Rather, the starting point - if GM crops were commercialised - would be to seek to put arrangements in place to achieve co-existence to eliminate or minimise problems arising in the first place. The consumer choice sub-group would explore the feasibility and nature of such arrangements. But it seemed likely that a series of protocols requiring adoption of certain farming practices, including separation distances, would be needed if coexistence was to be achieved. The thresholds and protocols needed to command the broad support of all parties with an economic interest and wider societal confidence.
11. Some members of the group emphasised the need for symmetry in the arrangements: a recognition that wishing to grow GM crops was just as valid as farmers wanting to grow organic or non-GM crops. Working out what symmetry meant in practice was harder. If the protocols did not impose an excessive economic or logistic burden on the GM farmer and could achieve coexistence then it probably did not offend the principle of symmetry too greatly, although there was no getting away from the fact that on the protocol model the burden of responsibility for taking the necessary measures to achieve coexistence fell primarily to the GM farmer. The question for those members of the group was whether the goal of seeking to achieve coexistence justified this slight asymmetry.
12. The negative economic impact at farm level that would trigger a requirement for compensation would be where GM material was found to be present in a non-GM crop in excess of specified thresholds leading to loss of market for a particular crop or loss of an organic premium. The group’s initial view was that where there was evidence that this had happened as a result of a breach of a protocol by one or more GM farmers, then the GM farmer (or farmers) would be responsible for his neighbour’s economic loss and then the expectation would be that if the non-GM farmer who suffered the economic lass chose to sue the GM farmer, the court would hold the GM farmer liable for compensation (this would rely on existing civil liability law – the liability law would not need to be changed).
13. This possible solution was of course predicated on the terms of co-existence protocols being practicable. There remained the difficult possible situation where economic loss was occasioned by geneflow but there was no evidence that there had been any breach of a protocol by any GM farmer. Since fault could not be proved in this scenario then the loss would be expected to lie where it fell (i.e. with the non-GM farmer) unless accepted by a third party (Government or industry) or covered by an insurance policy held by the non-GM farmer. The sub-group wanted the Commissions’ views on how to deal with this possible situation.
14. The group had considered indirect economic effects, for example, if a food processor or supermarket refused to buy non-GM produce on the basis that it came from a farm ‘in the vicinity’ of a GM farm. In law at present there would be no grounds for the non-GM farmer to sue the supermarket for economic loss. Moreover, the group took the view that there would be no justification for seeking to introduce new provisions in law for GM crops to extend the notion of economic loss in this way, not would seeking such an extension be realistic. The key aim should be to ensure that processors and supermarkets were content with the provisions of a coexistence regime so that unless there was evidence that protocols had been breached, supermarkets and food processors would accept non-GM crops in line with normal arrangements.
15. Taking a second category of examples, if a restaurant serving organic food could not source its ingredients from its usual farm because the farmer had lost organic status as a result of AP, the group understood that the restaurant owner or operator’s putative loss was insufficiently proximate to be recoverable either in the law as it stood nor, the group considered, would it be justified to seek to change the law to make it so.
16. The group had also considered the situation of a farmer growing GM crops finding it financially difficult to pay a non-GM farmer for any economic loss, either as a result of a court judgement where a protocol had been breached; or in an out-of-court settlement. The group’s thinking was that all that could be done here was to encourage the development of an insurance market (as already existed for damage caused by pesticide use). Financial difficulties of this kind were simply a feature of the normal business environment – equivalent situations could arise now in the course of conventional farming.
17. The group had discussed whether Government could ‘cap’ liability for negative economic impacts resulting from AP in non-GM crops, to encourage an insurance market to develop among farmers. This could be done whether or not agreed protocols were in place, although would possibly be more relevant to the situation where there was no agreed protocol, and instead it had been decided to leave it up to individual farmers to insure themselves against potential economic loss - either a non-GM farmer suffering AP in his non-GM crops or a GM farmer being sued. The group were currently undecided on the merits of capped liability, although as noted earlier, they favoured a solution of having an agreed protocol to try to avoid AP problems arising in the first place and to avoid farmers having to resort to law to deal with any problems that did arise. It seemed unlikely to Members that Government would accept such a contingent liability.
18. Other members of the sub-group thanked the convener for her summing-up.
Discussion
19. The Chair suggested that the discussion might first focus on potential economic impacts and then on environmental impacts of GM crop growing and liability - recognising that environmental impacts could also have an economic impact.
20. The Chair noted that in general the role of the State was different in respect of economic liability and environmental liability. In the former the only role of the State was to set the ground rules pertaining to the property rights of individuals or groups of people. Civil liability rules gave the framework for relationships between neighbours – a series of arrangements in the tort of nuisance mediated relationships between neighbours, including for example on the right to grow a specific crop. For environmental and wider biodiversity damage the basis was quite different, and the State had to become involved. The framework was largely civil liability and administrative liability, where public authorities administer statute law for the ‘unowned’ environment.
Members’ discussions: economic impacts and liability
21. The Chair noted that on economic impacts, the first question was whether existing liability law should be adjusted in pursuit of possible co-existence. The liability group was coming to the view - subject to the detailed analysis of the consumer choice sub-group - that protocols to achieve co-existence would be essential if GM crops were commercialised. Seeking agreed protocols would be consistent with the approach the AEBC had often endorsed, which was to put a high premium on negotiation and agreement, rather than on litigation and confrontation between farmers. Members of the liability sub-group noted that, importantly, it had not been axiomatic from the start of the group’s considerations that the emphasis should be on developing an agreed coexistence regime rather than looking to revert to the law to address the issues: this was a positive conclusion of the group rather than a default position.
22. Members noted that recommendations on economic liability in the working paper were predicated on the assumption that there could be an agreed coexistence protocol. It was therefore necessary to know whether coexistence was practicable and agreement to a protocol likely. Consumer choice and coexistence group members said that they had just started to examine these very questions. They were at present examining, crop-by-crop, whether coexistence in the UK of GM crop cultivation with non-GM farming (at an AP threshold of 0.9%) and organic farming (at the lowest detectable threshold i.e. around 0.1%) was practicable. The group’s emerging view was that even if practicable, protocols for the cultivation of GM crops should be agreed and used to minimise any problems around AP. The evidence suggested that possible coexistence would probably be relatively straightforward for some crops (beet and maize) and harder for others (oil seed rape). Protocols would need to be drawn up crop by crop and contain a range of elements including separation distances and other measures such as cleaning of farm machinery and minimising seed spillage.
23. Member agreed that the work of both sub-groups was now clearly complementary and inter-dependent. Agreement on the conclusions of the consumer choice sub-group on whether possible coexistence was practicable and if so, on what terms, was a necessary condition for the Commission to agree recommendations in relation to economic liability arrangements.
24. Protocols could in principle be voluntary, or underpinned in a range of ways: by criminal law, administrative law, or by existing liability law, in which latter case if a GM farmer abided by the protocol he would not be liable (and the converse true). (It was noted that the Part C consent conditions in EC/2001/18 related to human health and environmental risk and did not appear to offer any scope to impose conditions designed to achieve coexistence.) Some Members believed that there would be merit in making the protocols part of transitional arrangements that subsequently could be relaxed as the best use of GM crops became more familiar.
25. Some members were strongly of the view that protocols did need some legal underpinning beyond their potential use in determining liability under the existing law. How would the protocols be enforceable, even if they were agreed? And would farmers in practice undertake the measures specified in them? Would farmers (and contract operators) really stop to clear up any seed spillage from GM crops, clean the (often shared between farms) seed drills and so on? Some Members were sceptical. Others believed that good practice of this sort was commonplace among farmers and so should not prove a great burden. Members could agree that effective monitoring of compliance would be needed. The consumer choice sub-group had flagged up the issue of who would pay for such monitoring as something that needed to be addressed.
26. Members described crop assurance schemes, currently involving many farmers, whose use was expanding. They covered for example cleaning of farm machinery between different uses, seed spillage, and protocols for pesticide crop spraying. They tended to be underpinned by agricultural merchants, with the support of the Government and supermarkets. There were inevitably questions such as the appropriate level at which standards are set, the extent of monitoring, and the extent to which sanctions are enforced, but their existence showed that this was a possible pattern to work from, and one with which farmers were familiar.
27. One option would be for the use of the existing regulatory framework for seed production to be used to require compliance with the protocols as a condition of farmers being supplied by GM seed. Under existing legislation, consent-holders could control which farmers were given access to particular seed varieties. On this scenario, the incentive for making the scheme work would be for the biotechnology industry to seek an orderly introduction of the technology consistent with achieving co-existence, in order that the introduction of GM crops did not attract so much opposition from other farmers or the public. The incentive for the GM farmer to abide by the terms of the protocol would be continued future access to GM crops.
28. Members agreed that the really difficult issue, where the liability sub-group had been unable to find common ground, was where someone suffered economic loss through AP without there being any evidence of a protocol having been breached. (This hypothetical situation was predicated on there being a protocol in place and no change to existing liability law.) The options here included an industry or Government fund to provide economic redress; or simply seeking to have coexistence protocols that were designed to keep the number of such cases to an absolute minimum. Members agreed that all the options to deal with this possible scenario would be explored in the liability report fully.
29. Some Members wanted the report to explore making the consent holders legally liable for any economic loss through AP, on the grounds that those benefiting from the technology should pay for anything that goes wrong. Other members pointed out that the group of those who benefited would seem to go wider than the consent-holders and these could be diffuse. It was agreed that the liability report would set out all the options in respect of dealing with possible economic loss, showing the reasons why they had been rejected or adopted.
30. Some Members drew attention to potential economic impacts arising from longer-term unforeseen environmental effects, separate from any economic impacts on non-GM farmers from AP. This needed to be acknowledged and considered in the liability report. The Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit was considering the scope for economic (positive or negative) ‘shocks’ of this sort as part of its study into the economics of GM crops and this could be a useful resource for the liability report.
31. In this context it was agreed that the different relationships between economic and environmental, foreseeable and unforeseeable, person-to-person etc should be delineated in the liability report to build up the overall picture of what was at stake and the place of the law, protocols and the options for action by the different actors (farmers, courts, industry, Government) who were involved.
32. Members also agreed that the liability report would be confined to crops at the farm stage, because that was the AEBC’s remit and because after leaving the farm, there were existing legal mechanisms for regulating AP i.e. contract law. There was of course no such contractual legal framework arrangement between neighbouring farmers in respect of what sort of crops they would grow.
33. There was discussion of the test of a well-designed economic liability regime. Members’ suggestions included one that was testable and enforceable, one that was workable and pragmatic, or one that covered all eventualities. It certainly had to be assessed against present and likely future faming practice to check that what it would be feasible for farmers to carry it out.
34. The question of any negative economic effects to beekeepers had been flagged up as an issue for the report.
Environmental liability
35. Members discussed the sub-group’s emerging view that there should not be a separate environmental remediation regime for GM crops.
36. Members had different views about how much of a problem if at all there was about protection of biodiversity in the farmland environment. Most Members thought there were significant gaps in protection and that the liability report should say this. But it did not follow that it made sense to recommend new environmental liability legislation in relation to GM crops to try to solve these wider problems. Looking at the political situation realistically, it was clear that development of general environmental liability legislation in the EU was taking a long time. In any case it would only cover major damage to especially important sites, not farmland biodiversity more generally. It was unrealistic to recommend trying to create separate legislation at UK level to cover all agricultural indirect environmental impacts: this would need to be addressed at EU level (perhaps through reform of the CAP). Members also noted that there was not yet a good set of ecological data to use as a baseline against which to measure environmental impacts of different farming types: data was being gathered over time to provide for this but more work was needed on the science, regardless of any change in the law.
37. Liability sub-group members noted that in terms of any direct environmental harm, the regulatory authorities already had substantial powers for environmental damage in existing environmental legislation, including preventing further damage once it started to emerge. In principle, any problems should be picked up at an early stage because of the legal requirement for long-term monitoring under EC/2001/18.
38. Members agreed that the report should emphasise that the existing law had an important but limited role in obtaining potential redress for economic loss through AP and also for direct environmental damage. The liability report should make clear what could and what could not be addressed by existing or enhanced liability law. There needed to be a clear setting of the context early in the report, in a way there was not yet in the working document. Otherwise there was a danger that there would be an implication in the report that certain views about the significance or difference or otherwise of GM crops – which were not shared by all Commission members – were being presupposed by conclusions about the law (e.g. not to have a GMO-specific environmental bioremediation legal regime). To be credible the report would need to bring out the differences in views about GMOs. These differences did not mean that there could not be agreement among members about specific conclusions relating to co-existence and liability law, but the common ground among Members regarding the arguments supporting those conclusions must be carefully delineated.
39. Liability regimes worked best for specific events with clear causal links; they are not well suited to dealing with diffuse or cumulative and possibly unforeseeable damage. The report might need to acknowledge that liability law was quite simply not a suitable or not the best vehicle to deal with any such unforeseeable environmental effects. Such a conclusion would not imply a view on the likelihood of whether or not such damage would occur. The report should be quite explicit about the reasoning behind any such conclusion. The Commission could recommend practical options in response to concerns about any unforeseeable – or arguably foreseeable - impacts included an industry fund, a bond; or simply highlight that adoption of a new technology was a wider societal issue which should be assessed properly but, if things went unforeseeably wrong at some future point, then Government (and by implication future taxpayers) picked up the bill. On this latter line of thinking there was essentially a choice for society: it could embrace these new technologies – taking such precautions as deemed necessary – or not go ahead. In the report, this needed to be stated.
40. Some Members said that problems or indeed benefits could also arise from foreseeable (rather than unforeseeable outcomes). This would be where factors not deemed important during the risk assessment process proved to be so at some future point, perhaps because of wider developments unrelated to the technology (through take-up of other products, perhaps). Other Members noted that all new farming practices raised potentially foreseeable effects – for example the changes to farmland wildlife resulting from the widespread use of winter rather than spring sown wheat.
Responsibility
41. Consideration of both possible foreseeable and unforeseeable effects raised in discussion led Members to a broader discussion about the nature of taking responsibility for a new technology. Responsibility went wider than liability. Genetic modification was one of a range of transforming technologies. Liability is apportioned in a legal framework, and thus given to those involved. However responsibility is something people take on themselves rather than being given. It is not possible to require people to take responsibility, and if no-one else accepts it, then the responsible authority of last resort is invariably Government: although the notion of last resort only really came to the fore if something went badly wrong. There were precedents for Government underwriting unanticipated economic loss in the past – e.g. from BSE and foot and mouth disease. Where there are major problems, Government has to step in as a last resort because only it has the capacity and funds to do so, whatever the formal liability position might be (because any party at fault would not normally have sufficient resources to offer redress). It was noted that in the short term, however, there was a dilemma in making regulators liable, as it tended to instil excessively high degrees of precaution.
42. Some Members argued in the context of possible GM crop cultivation that arrangements already existed where industry and farmers were taking responsibility for using the new technology in a considerate and careful way through the SCIMAC guidelines, and described stewardship schemes for novel crops, which a number of companies have in place, as examples of a responsible use of a new technology. Members note that in other industries, the concept of corporate social responsibility to a wide group of people was a concept used in evaluation of corporate behaviour. Some Members thought that something analogous might be possible here relevant to dealing with public concerns about any (foreseeable) damage occurring despite compliance with the regulatory process and for any unforeseeable damage, which could lead to a significant shift in public opinion.
43. What these Members had in mind was that if industry, recognising the public climate in relation to GM crops, signalled its confidence in the products of agricultural biotechnology by underwriting a fund to deal with any adverse environmental or economic impacts, then this could send an important signal about the confidence industry had in the safety of these products. Other Members feared that opponents of the technology would simply seize on such a move as evidence that industry believed that the GM products were unsafe or negatively ‘different’ from their conventional counterparts in some way – otherwise why would they be putting money aside to deal with any negative effects? It was also true that some possible consequences (foreseen and unforeseen) were not remediable in financial terms. Members noted too a practical consideration - that alongside agricultural biotechnology companies and bulk commodity crop producers, there were much smaller firms involved (e.g. those working with horticultural crops and smaller scale agricultural crops) which might find it difficult to contribute to any fund (either for AP-related economic impacts or these possible wider ones).
44. Being seen to ‘take responsibility’ in this or perhaps in some other way did not do away with the need for underpinning regulatory provision, but could exist alongside regulation. It was however about inspiring greater confidence in a different way from relying on more and more regulation - the route that industry and Government had adopted so far in relation to agricultural biotechnology. Some Members stressed that in their view the agricultural biotechnology companies already took full responsibility for their products – selling them was after all how these companies expected to stay profitable in coming years. The products had been assessed as safe and under EC/2001/18 there was now provision for long-term monitoring of environmental impact.
45. Most Members could also see that there was a case for not singling out GM crops in this way. Marker-assisted breeding would soon be bringing forward large advances in crop production that could be as significant as GM technology, if not more so. Showing evidence of taking responsibility for the long-term potentially applied to all novel processes with an environmental impact. Other members agreed, but thought that that should not prevent the broader issue of who was responsible and how public trust might be fostered in relation to agricultural biotechnology to included in the liability report, and it was agreed that the discussion of options for doing so would be included.
Next steps
46. The Chair said that the Commission aimed to discuss and agree at the May AEBC meeting reports on both liability and on consumer choice and co-existence setting out the range of options and agreeing some recommendations. The liability report would be developed in the light of the useful discussion among Members.
47. Both draft - and in due course final - reports would be available as resources during the public debate in addition to providing strategic advice to Government. There would be a process of consultation with stakeholders on both reports. There would be executive summaries produced also, as for the animals and biotechnology report.
48. The Commission planned that Mr Burnett-Hall would provide further specialist legal advice and drafting support while the liability report was being developed.
49. The AEBC liability report would deal with GM crops only because decisions on crop commercialisation were imminent. The group recognised that other GMOs (fish, animals and insects) could raise different environmental issues in particular and would need separate consideration.
Matters of Report
EC Approval process
50. Professor Grove-White said that the restarting under EC/2001/18 of the case-by-case approvals process for import or cultivation of specific GM varieties, on which the GM Public Debate Steering Board had received a briefing on 20 February, raised important issues for the credibility of the GM public debate and for the work of the AEBC on consumer choice and co-existence and liability. Restarting the approvals process meant that Government in coming months and possibly within the period of the GM public debate might be required to give opinions on individual applications. An e-mail from Professor Grove-White was tabled at the meeting setting out further background with a suggestion that the AEBC should advise the Secretary of State that, pending resolution of these issues, it would be premature for Government, through the EU process now in train, to give endorsement to any of the consent applications; and that for Government to do otherwise would pre-empt judgements (and important potential conditions) which could only be made following such resolution - to the detriment of the credibility of both AEBC and the public debate process itself.
51. Some Members supported this suggestion, noting that Government responding to the individual product dossiers would mean real problems for the credibility of the debate. Others could not support any suggestion that the AEBC advise Government to block or slow the approvals process and did not believe that in practice the process of scientific assessment need undermine the public debate process. A number of Members asked for further information on the approvals process and the cases pending in order to take a view. It was agreed that the secretariat would circulate this. Some Members suggested that Government might be invited, against the background of its stated commitment to taking account of the outcome of the debate, to explain how it planned to deal with policy on possible coexistence and liability and the possible issue of the credibility of the debate process, alongside its responsibilities in respect of case-by-case approvals. The Chair invited the secretariat to draft a letter to Ministers, in the light of the discussion, on which he would also consult non-AEBC members of the public debate steering board.
Action: secretariat
OST
52. Jeremy Clayton had now replaced Jo Durning in the Office of Science and Technology, and would meet Members during the day.
Secretariat
53. Laura McMahon had joined the secretariat at the beginning of February, in place of Mileva Novkovic who had been promoted to a new post. Members welcomed Mrs McMahon to her new post.
GM Public Debate
54. The Chair referred to paper AEBC/03/03 that gave an update on the work of the GM public debate steering board. He confirmed that there had been an exchange of correspondence with the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs which had confirmed a doubling of the budget for the programme of debate to £500,000, with in addition the management fee for COI Communications being paid by DEFRA. The steering board planned to submit their report to Government in September 2003. The Chair also reported that he, Professor Maxwell and a member of the secretariat had met Mr Ross Finnie, the Scottish Executive Minister with responsibility for policy on GM crops, to discuss the steering board’s plans for the debate.
55. Members thanked the steering board for their excellent work in steering the public debate work this far in very difficult circumstances and praised them for generating interest and innovation. Particular thanks were also expressed to the secretariat. The Chair thanked Members for their comments and apologised for the impact of the GM debate workload on the rest of the AEBC’s work.
56. Clarification was sought on the role of the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in the debate and their proposed citizen’s jury and how this would feed in to the work the other groups were doing on the debate. The Chair confirmed that he had been unaware of the FSA’s planned timing when the FSA launched its own programme of debate activities on 14 February. He has encouraged the FSA to seek to conduct activities complementary to those planned by the GM debate steering board. The Chair reported that following a discussion at the steering board about what the FSA and the steering board were doing respectively, the Chair would be writing to Sir John Krebs.
57. Sue Mayer was encouraged to accept an invitation to sit on the citizen’s jury for the debate activities being conducted by the FSA.
Consumer Choice and Coexistence sub-group work update.
58. The consumer choice subgroup reported that they had an outline report structure for the report. Several AEBC Members felt that they needed a clearer idea of where the group had got to, and that now that the deadline for agreeing the report had been brought forward to May, further time was needed to discuss the issues was needed. Concern was also expressed over the proposed stakeholder meeting on consumer choice and coexistence due to take place on 28 April, as Members would not have had the opportunity to discuss the issues as a Commission before this went ahead. It was agreed that there would be an additional Commission meeting before the stakeholder seminar to discuss the report. The secretariat would arrange this and circulate the outline report structure and recent sub-group meeting minutes to all Commission Members.
Action: secretariat
59. In terms of scope, Members agreed that the consumer choice and coexistence recommendations would focus on what happened on the farm and go no further than up to the point of delivery of the crop to a processor or distributor, taking account of the implications for farmers of how these parties handled the crops (particularly seed crops).
60. It was reported that the European Commission was taking forward policy on co-existence based on a communication from Mr Fischler. The secretariat was arranging for the AEBC to be represented at the European Commission round-table discussion on co-existence at the end of April.
DEFRA Baseline research study
61. Dave Carmichael reported that the research team were finalising a baseline study into a review of research into the environmental and socio-economic impacts of contemporary and alternative arable cropping systems and by the end of February. Once agreement had been reached the report would be released (probably within the next few weeks) and posted on the DEFRA, science review and AEBC websites. The AEBC were keen to support DEFRA’s efforts to publicise the work. AEBC Members interested in seeing the forthcoming draft were asked to contact the secretariat.
62. Dave Carmichael reported that a second contract had been commissioned by DEFRA from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) to undertake a literature review of biodiversity in herbicide-tolerant GM crops. The review would critically analyse the literature on the effects on farmland biodiversity of the management associated with genetically modified arable cropping systems in the UK and the rest of the world and would hopefully identify gaps in the knowledge. This review had been commissioned by DEFRA internally and was likely to be published a few weeks after the first CEH report. DEFRA had offered to send the draft to the secretariat for any AEBC comments ahead of its finalisation.
Update on ACRE working group to review the GM inspection and enforcement regime
63. Rosie Hails reported that ACRE was aiming to release a report at the end of March on inspection and enforcement and what additional measures might be required to ensure adequate risk management.
64. The review would examine recent cases of AP for lessons that could be learned, and recommend potential improvements to consent conditions for the future. It would also consider whether requirements should be placed on consent holders for the provision of information (including molecular data) and samples to support the inspection and enforcement regime.
65. The subgroup had met for the first time on the 20th February 2003 and identified the key issues as being: