Michael Meachers' speech, House of Commons
29th April 04.

There are three arguments that are normally made in favour of GM:

1. It is a more efficient and focussed scientific technology than traditional crossbreeding.
2. It produces higher crop yields and less pesticide use to benefit environment
3. As world population increases steadily from 6 billion now to 9/10 billion in 2050, GM is needed to feed the world especially in developing countries.

All three of those arguments are demonstrably false. It is not a more efficient form of traditional cross breeding, but a qualitatively different and risky technology, which can cross species barriers, which Nature would never do. Blasting GM DNA into a plant arbitrarily and out of a sequence of genes, which has evolved over hundreds of millions of years to optimise the functioning of the organism is clearly risky and unpredictable and destabilises the chemistry of plants.

With regard to yields and pesticide use yes, there is evidence from Argentina and Canada that initially yields did increase and that pesticide use fell, but the latest evidence from Charles Benbrook who is an independent US Scientist from Idaho, who has systematically studied this has shown that over the last 7 years yields began to fall and pesticide use has markedly increased. Why? To combat the development of volunteers and superweeds. With regard to GM’s capacity to counter world hunger, well frankly, that is utterly marginal to the point of invisibility when the real causes of developing countries famine and under-nourishment are:

• A discriminatory trading system, which impoverishes Developing Countries.


• Bad or corrupt governments that mismanage their economies.


• Gross maldistribution of land.


• Lack of population management policies.

If you dealt with those, you could forget the role of GM. So if none of these arguments in favour holds water are there are any arguments against GM?
There are, I think three main ones: -

1. By far and away the most important is that GM is a risk to both environment and to human health. With regard to the environment there have never been either in the UK where I think we have a reasonable record or anywhere in the world adequate or systematic testing of the effects of GM crops on the environment. The Farm Scale Evaluation trials, which we carried out in the UK were extremely narrow, in other words they were limited purely to assessing the effects of using different herbicides or chemical weed killers as between GM and non-GM crops. There was nothing either in those studies in this country or anywhere else abroad about long term soil pollution, about transgene flow, about problems of superweeds or about the environmental impacts if farmers do what in the real world they will do and that is maximise crop yields. So all this work which are the essential issues about the environment still remain to be done. Now as regards to the effect of eating GM foods on human health it is I think, almost unbelievably, although I think understood by most of the people here, that virtually no direct testing has been done. Because of the doctrine of substantial equivalence used ruthlessly by the biotech companies precisely in order to avoid independent research. In other words they compare a GM product with a non-GM counterpart in terms of toxins, nutrients and allergens, by saying they are broadly similar and therefore substantially equivalent, they simply deem that the GM products safe The word that I would use to describe that is a scam. And indeed someone I can see in the audience was only saying last night; it’s rather like comparing a cow with BSE and a cow without BSE and saying that they are substantially equivalent. What very limited studies have been undertaken are extremely worrying. In a study a couple of years ago in Newcastle University, where a sample were fed one single meal of GM soya, and the GM DNA was later found to have survived almost intact and transferred to gut bacteria which could compromise antibiotic resistance. Arpad Pusztai, a Hungarian scientist with a fine reputation found that GM potatoes with snowdrop lectin damaged every organ system of rats particularly stomach lining which noticeably thickened and could be, I’m not saying it is, but could be, a precursor of cancer. And we also know for example that a dozen dairy cows died on a farm in Hesse, in North Germany, after eating Syngenta Bt 176 GM maize. These are just examples, but what is most worrying, this is the central point that I am making, of all is that none of these results whilst, being rubbished by scientific establishments, were ever followed up with further tests to confirm or refute original findings. They preferred personality vilification to genuine scientific enquiry.

That’s my first concern about GM; the other two are much shorter.

2. GM crops will cross contaminate conventional or organic crops in particular.
Let us be honest no separation distance even if they were substantially increased beyond the very small ones we have at the present time will wholly prevent this. And "co-existence ", again let us be honest, wonderful phrase, it is a mirage, it is impossible. Yet there is no statutory liability provision, despite the efforts, particularly of Alan (Simpson MP) in this place to try and secure it. There is no statutory liability provision in place or planned to protect either conventional or organic farmers. So the question is do we really want to license GM crops, which nobody wants and for which there is no market even the Government report acknowledged that at the expense of organic crops which people do want in increasing amounts, which we import in very large amounts and for which there is a huge and expanding market?

3.My third point concerns labelling because it is often said and it sounds perfectly reasonable and I don't disagree with this that the consumers should be left to choose but there are two objections to this: -

• 1. Contamination by GM crops once it gets out once it has occurred is irreversible so if consumers later decide against GM by then it can certainly be argued that it will already be too late


• 2. EU labelling rules which came into existence in April 2004 and I was talking to Josie Macdonald about how far these were actually being carried through and checked (and I think the answer that she may give later in discussion is hardly at all) The EU labelling rules, if you go into a shop and you pick up a jar or a pot and you look at it and it’s got no labelling on it, what you don’t know is whether it is GM free, or whether it contains up to nearly 1% of GM 0.9% which is the figure chosen by the EU. Instead of what we should have is labelling at the level of detectability, which is 0.1%, which is entirely practicable.

So I conclude what needs to be done?

1. A full-scale expert enquiry in this country, I say over next 5-10 years, I think the time period is not an issue; we have fed ourselves for one hundred and fifty thousand years as a human species without GM. 5,10 years or 20 years is not the point, however long it takes. A full scale expert enquiry the to systematically and rigorously test the impact of GM crops on environment and human health
2. A much more open and transparent scientific process, what I mean by that, I mean t no more suppression and vilification of scientists whose work may produce results that are inconvenient either for the Government or the Biotechnology Industry. And no more denial or dismissal of what is undoubtedly extensive scientific evidence, on the hazards on GM by supposedly disinterested advisory committees and regulatory bodies.
3. Need decision making in this country which is uncontaminated by influence by the biotech industry which is one of the most powerful vested interests. And what do I mean by that? No scientist with current or recently passed financial links with the Biotech industry should be appointed to any Government advisory committee or regulatory body and that Government should ensure the integrity of research results by fully funding independent research, not leaving (as at present) 25% of funding to come from the private sector, and thus forcing universities into the hands of the corporate sponsors. What we need therefore is public, independent research, with integrity, which the public can trust in a very controversial area to point to the way forward not private research influenced or manipulated by vested interests which only produce distrust and cynicism and will ultimately be self-defeating.

Thank you very much.