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GM Science Review Panel - Meetings[This document is also available
in Adobe Acrobat format MINUTES OF THE THIRD MEETING
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Professor David King (Chair) |
Professor John Gray |
Secretariat
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Dr Adrian Butt (Secretary), OST/DEFRA |
Ms Maia Gedde, OST |
Apologies
1. Apologies for absence had been received from: Professor Diana Bowles, and Professor Michael Wilson.
Chairman's opening remarks
2. Professor King welcomed Panel members and observers from the public to the third Science Review Panel meeting and invited observers to join the Panel for lunch. He reminded members that this and future Panel meetings would be audio recorded to assist the Secretariat to produce the minutes.
3. At the first meeting the Panel had identified issues of interest and concern to the scientific community. At the second meeting a framework was proposed and tested against a number of specific issues of interest and concern. This approach was endorsed. A work plan was also agreed involving the establishment of drafting groups. Professor King emphasized that their work over the next few weeks would be critical to the outcome of the Review. At this meeting the Panel would review some further issues, consider the work plan further and a skeleton draft of the Report.
4. Two open meetings had been held since the last Panel meeting. He thanked Panel members that participated and he would be writing to speakers to thank them and the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA) on the Panels' behalf.
1. Minutes of the Second meeting (18 February)
5. The minutes of the second meeting were confirmed as an accurate record subject to one change.
2. Matters arising and Secretary's update
6. The website now listed 67 contributions. Open meetings had been held in Belfast on 11 March entitled GM animal feed: safety implications for the food chain, and another at Aberystwyth on 17 March on GM crops: gene flow and fitness in natural and agricultural systems. There were currently no plans for further meetings but if new areas emerged these could be organised. Verbatim transcripts and reports would soon be placed on the website for all four meetings.
Timing
7. The Government had now agreed that the GM Debate Steering Board would report its findings to the UK Government by the end of September, with a debate programme running through May, June and July. At the February Panel meeting Professor King suggested to the Panel that under these circumstances, it made sense for the Panel to press on with the existing timetable to deliver a report in June, pause over the summer and reconvene in the early autumn to take account of the further output of the Public Debate. The Panel had agreed with this proposal. Professor King reported that government had made no formal decision.
3. Reviewing the science: further issues (Paper SRP/P06)
8. The following issues below were discussed and it was agreed that "technical minutes" would provide a summary note of these proceedings.
- "Gene transfer from GM crops to soil bacteria and fungi could produce unpredictable effects such as changes to soil ecology or broader changes at the ecosystem level."
- "How fluid is the genome and what do we know about the mechanisms that underlie these processes? Set against this baseline, what are the implications for introducing transgenes into plants?"
- "What are the bio-safety opportunities or risks associated with the genetic modification of chloroplasts?"
- "Gene flow from GM plants containing cell ablation genes could compromise the agronomic performance of conventional crops and cause wild relatives to go extinct."
4. The work plan (Paper SRP/P07)
9. Members thought that rather than having a benefits column in the matrix, benefits should be listed alongside the other issues included for review because there were many claimed benefits of GM crops that ought to be investigated. They explored the practical implications of what this would involve.
10. There was a view that if benefits were included it should be done more elaborately and more systematically than was currently provided or not done at all. One suggestion was that the Panel should only look at GM in terms of those benefits that are unique to GM; or look at it in terms of systematically comparing any given attribute of a GMO with any other means of fulfilling that aim. It was also pointed out that, if that was the approach it would be an onerous and large-scale task and would need to be done in relation to the Strategy Unit's work. Members took these concerns into consideration whilst discussing the treatment of benefits.
Benefits to the UK
11. Most members took the view that environmental benefits to the UK ought to be tractable because some targets are clear now. This seemed to make sense to many because the Review was dealing with issues of biodiversity and if it could identify benefits these ought to be covered otherwise the Review would be one sided.
12. There was general agreement that it ought to be possible to treat some of the benefits as specific propositions to be tested by the framework criteria for which there are an available literature. This could be quite rigorous. For example, if there is a proposition that a certain class of development will lead to a reduction of herbicide use, this is might be testable from the available literature and expertise around the table.
13. Reduced tillage, reduced runoff, reduced use of herbicides, increase in delays in spraying were listed as possible areas to review that were relevant. To do this, it was agreed that the Panel should look at the literature related to worldwide experience and apply this as appropriate to the UK situation.
Benefits to developing countries
14. A range of views was expressed before an agreed approach was reached. Some members thought that treatment of this subject on a broad-brush basis would provide nothing consolidated that the Review could possibly pronounce on. Another viewpoint was that if the Review went down this path it would have to be done very systematically. Others were concerned that this was unrealistic given the tight timescale of the Review and care would be needed not to duplicate the costs and benefits work undertaken by the Strategy Unit.
15. However, there was widespread agreement with the following arguments and approach. Although the Panel agreed that it could not generalise from evidence derived from one or two technologies in one or two places right across the board, it could use a few examples to illustrate the kinds of things that are happening provided the Panel couched its language very carefully and did not state that this applies everywhere. It could, therefore, be done provided the Review Report made it clear that it was not comprehensive. It would help the debate if the Review raised a few examples in one of the half hour presentations at the next Panel meeting to illustrate these aspects.
16. It was also felt important that the Review should be seen to have addressed some of the issues raised in relation to agriculture in developing counties not least because the Corr Willbourn Report has a series of questions relating to: "some people say GM is going to save the world others say it will not".
5. The Report (Paper SRP/P08)
Audience
17. There was discussion about the customers for this report: the general public, opinion formers, scientists and Ministers. It was agreed that the summary ought to be written with clarity of language and avoidance of acronyms in a way that will make it accessible to others and understood by those outside the field.
Structure
Treatment of the issues
18. There was agreement that the Review Report would be issue led and that the most tractable way forward was that there would be three chapters, corresponding to the three drafting group reports, to cover the issues under the three broad areas of food and feed safety; environmental impact and detection; and gene flow.
19. Members liked the way the issues were presented in Panel meetings: here is the issue, here is the evidence, and this is the problem and this is how it has been misunderstood or conceived of in another way. There was a suggestion that a couple of pages of notes that the discussion leaders had prepared would be enough of a narrative and then a reference to the place where the reader could find key scientific references and abstracts. Professor King hoped that the Panel could agree to that general approach and he thought that the idea of having these Panel discussions was to set out the tone for the reports from the groups, which he personally thought had been exceptionally good.
20. One member remarked that although the Report was going to be issue led, the topic on food safety represented a whole synthesis of different points. He had difficulty in forming in his own mind how to get the level of the "glue" that will turn independent issues into a concept that will enable someone to understand safety. At the end of it there was just going to be a small subset of all the issues, which when added together would give the reader a confidence or a lack of confidence on the weight of evidence for food safety. And in his view, a key point for discussion in drafting groups would be to know how to turn it into a useful statement that could be melded together. Professor King remarked that it was important that the Review didn't become a massive tone on safety, which would be volumes if we were to deal with everything.
21. In the methodology section it was suggested that there would be a need to introduce the framework and issues and justify these and, to emphasise the links to the public debate and economics strands.
The Bibliography
22. Opinions ranged on where and in what form references should be presented in the Report.
23. The options considered were (1) a standard bibliography listing or (2) an enhanced abstract style bibliography. However there was a concern with (2) that this was adding to the workload on the drafting groups. Others pointed out that this would not necessarily increase the work load because some of the things we might have otherwise discuss in the major paper could actually be in the referenced abstracts. One member dissented from (2). The idea of long lists of papers with mini abstracts in the report would turn it into a mini telephone directory and would be of no use to anyone. He thought that it might have a place on the web but that the report was not the place for an extended bibliography of this type.
24. Professor King made it clear that they had to strike the right balance. The Report had to be in one sense weighty - in that it took all these matters into account and was seen to do that. Appendices on a website might be a useful way forward.
25. Professor King concluded the discussion. He was not convinced it was a good idea to have a bibliography of abstracts in the publication. It was agreed to leave it at that for the moment and for the drafting groups to come back if they wished, at the next meeting, and explain why they disagreed.
Food Standards Agency
26. Professor King remarked that the Panel should be sensitive to the fact that the Food Standards Agency is at arms length from government. As a body it nevertheless has the say on safety of food in this country and that it was better that the Agency was not directly engaged with the Review.
27. However, just as the public debate and economics strands were independent in the way they were set up, communication between the strands was vital. Similarly there was a need to inform the FSA.
28. The Secretariat explained that officials were trying to tease out what was meant by "with independent advice from the Food Standards Agency" actually meant. The chairs of the advisory committees that advise the FSA sit on the Panel and the Secretariat was trying to find out if that was sufficient or whether the FSA wished to comment on the reports that were being drafting in the food area as they arise so people could see their comments were separate from the Panel's comments.
6. Any other business
29. Professor King reminded members that they were free to voice their views about the Review to the press but it was important that if there were anxieties, they took the opportunity at the Panel meetings to discuss these with colleagues. Comments in the press had been attributed to two panel members (9 March, The Observer) and he asked both members whether they felt that any anxieties that they might have expressed to the press were still with them.
30. The first member explained that his remarks were not misquoted, but had been made in the context of how he thought of the Review, as a potentially positive exercise with new opportunities. But these positive statements had not been reported. Nonetheless, his belief was that there might be a danger that the unknowns and uncertainties were neglected. He thought that there were still ambiguities in the extent to which we could address these, and that was why he thought it was important that the framework the Panel was working with was adopted fully.
31. Professor King invited the second member to make a statement about a quote attributed to him "the Review is clearly meant to achieve something other than an objective assessment of the issues." The Panel member explained that this was accurate in the context that licenses for commercialisation had already been given by Government and that the Panel was part of a system that would result in commercialisation and would not have a role in influencing any future decision. The process was a foregone conclusion. Members remarked that it was their understanding that no decisions on commercialisation would be taken during the life of the Review; the Panel was reassured that this was indeed the case.
32. Professor King remarked that if the Panel member was saying that the Review was not an objective process it was an attack on him as chairman and it was also perhaps an attack on members of the Panel. He hoped that was an incorrect interpretation of his position.
33. Professor King gave the Panel his assurance, and he hoped that this had come through in the way he had chaired the meetings, that he had no idea of the final outcome of the Review. He thought that the outcome of this series of meetings would be rather complex and that it would result in a complex document precisely because he could hear a lot of objectivity on all these issues around him.
34. This member raised another issue. He was concerned that there were two "representatives" of the biotechnology companies on the Panel. He felt that there was a lot of people around the table that may need funding from them and felt that it would have been wiser not to have them on the Panel.
35. Professor King remarked that no one sitting around the table was a representative. There may be people that have connections to companies and that was an important distinction to make.
36. Professor King expressed the view that we should judge the people on the Panel by what they said at the table. He believed that if you were to take tape recordings and listen to them it would be very difficult from the comments made to judge who was saying what in terms of their connections with companies or what ever. If his statement was correct, he hoped that the member would agree that everyone was contributing in the spirit of the Review that is based on evidence-led scientific discussion of issues raised. He personally valued the presence of those people on the Panel.
7. Date and time of next meeting
37. The next Panel meeting is 11 am to 4.00 pm on Tuesday 29 April at the Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, Covent Garden, London.
GM Science Review Secretariat
April 2003
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