New Petitions

Ninety-two per cent of the population of Munlochy opposes the GM trials because of the harm that the farm-scale evaluation could cause to health and the environment. When the experimental crop flowers, villagers have no option but to inhale the pollen, which makes them part of the experiment. There is also major opposition to the farm-scale evaluation programme in Aberdeenshire and Fife, where public anger is vocal and widespread. Concern and outrage motivated the Highland community to establish and maintain a vigil beside the crop. Overwintering beside the crop evidenced the level of public concern. The number of people who have signed the petition is 4,114, which is equivalent to the population of the Black Isle.The issue is about science, democracy and economics. People live close to the crops and must suffer the untested effects on their health and livelihoods. Their actions as consumers, communities and businesses have demonstrated that they want neither farm-scale evaluations nor products made from GM ingredients.Charles Saunders, chairman of the British Medical Association's Scottish committee for public health medicine and community health, declared that the Scottish Executive is taking a gamble with our health. He stated of the trials:"We simply don't have enough scientific evidence on their safety to be able to make a valid decision as to whether there are potential health effects or not."No testing has been carried out on the health of the people of Munlochy, Daviot, Rothienorman or Newport-on-Tay. No baseline has been set, which leads to a complete lack of confidence in the trials. Until reliable and valid evidence provides evidence that the trials are safe, the Scottish Executive should invoke the precautionary principle and comply with European Union directives 90/220/EEC and 2001/18/EC.The limitations of the trials and the concerns over their monitoring and overall conduct call into question their validity and reliability. One example is the use of different varieties and ever-changing sowing rates. The rate is currently 250 seeds per square metre; it was originally 120 per square metre. That compares with 60 seeds per square metre for a good commercial crop. Those figures question strongly the validity of the science, as do the differing growth habits and weed numbers in the trial and control crops at Munlochy. The trial crop's genetic stability and its resistance to glufosinate ammonium have been questioned, as has the associated run-off into the village and the Munlochy bay environmentally sensitive area. In connection with the trials, GA is licensed only for winter use, and a court case is pending over that consent. According to the science editor of The Sunday Times, the preliminary results show that the trials are damaging the environment. In an answer to a written question, the Executive stated that it understands that no interim results yet exist. If there is such evidence, it should be in the public domain, as stipulated in article 8 of the relevant EU directive, and it should be acted on, in accordance with article 4. Mr Finnie has repeatedly said that, if there was evidence of a threat or risk to the environment, he would stop the trials. Supermarkets do not use GM produce in their own-brand goods, 79 per cent of Europeans do not want it and there are serious international concerns over the adequacy of the safety-testing procedures for GM foods. The demand for genetically modified produce has collapsed, so why are we risking people's health and the environment for a product without commercial prospects?Scotland has an opportunity to listen to the public and to reinforce its environmental assets. It must seize that opportunity and act now, rather than dealing with the aftermath, as was the case with BSE and foot-and-mouth disease. GM produce will not restore public confidence in the food chain or in the farming industry. The trials must be stopped immediately. Parliament must have a full debate—with a free vote in order to reflect cross-party support and political concern—to give the issue a democratic hearing.

Absolutely. The—

The problem lies in something called gene stacking. Oil-seed rape has been genetically modified to be used with a particular herbicide, which is produced by the same company that produces the seed. That company therefore has a monopoly. If commercialisation happened in Scotland, Aventis would grow only some crops and Monsanto would grow others. There would be tolerance to two herbicides. Therefore, once the crop cross-pollinated with wild brassicas, the only way in which volunteers in the field could control it over a period of years would be by using such herbicides as Paraquat and 2,4-D, which is derived from Agent Orange. That is the level to which we will go.

Absolutely. There are two kinds of consent for trials. Part B consent is for experimental releases and part C consent is for commercialisation. The oil-seed rape in question does not have part C consent, so it cannot enter the food chain. However, birds such as pheasants are wandering over the crop and have been doing so since the seeds were sown. Part B consents are entirely in the hands of the Scottish Executive. The Executive is classed as the competent authority, so it can do what it likes—it could halt the trials tomorrow.

Mr Finnie's response is that, unless he has evidence of a threat to the environment or to human health, he can do nothing. However, evidence of environmental damage can be found. The Sunday Times article declared that the preliminary results for the first two years of the trials showed that that was the case. I ask the committee to try to get hold of that information and to put it in the public domain. If the evidence exists, Mr Finnie must act—that is a legal requirement. Linda Martin spoke about health. Charles Saunders, the chairman of the BMA's Scottish committee for public health, said that there is no health testing, so how can anyone prove that there is a risk? The situation is outrageous.

I reinforce that point. Members might have seen the Sunday Herald article by Rob Edwards, in which he made the commercial complaint that no insurance companies are willing to assist any liability schemes for farmers who are conducting the trials. An organic farmer who is five miles away from a trial site suffers a real risk of contamination and hence of losing Soil Association accreditation. There is no insurance to help such farmers if their businesses go down the tubes. The fact that commercial companies have picked up those signals is a sure-fire indication that concern is not just coming from environmentalists or loonies, but is reflected in hard banking terms.Syngenta, a large biotechnology company that has been heavily involved in genetic engineering and has a large genetic engineering capacity, has not been involved in any European trials. It is trying to push something through in the south of India, but that is another story. It is moving away from involvement in GM food or seed. It is going for zero tolerance on contamination. Syngenta is a big producer of oil-seed rape. Five years ago, it had about 1 per cent of the market share of oil-seed rape; this year, it will have about 50 per cent of the market share. It produces non-GM oil-seed rape using a new technique—marker-assisted breeding—that does not involve interference with the genome. Even if we leave aside the insurance angle, that is an instance of a significant biotech company backing down from field-scale evaluations and the commercialisation of GM food and seed.

The new directive does not come into force until October. At the moment, we have a crop on top of a hill; that crop will flower. There are serious concerns about that. An entire village is terrified about what will happen when the crop flowers.I take the committee back to what John Farquhar Munro said about the Executive. Under the precautionary principle, the Executive has a duty to act. If I provide members with a definition of the precautionary principle, they will be able to see why it is easy for the Executive to pull the trial. The definition states:"Where an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be invoked even if some cause and effect relationships are not established in scientific fact".We do not even need scientific fact to pull the trial. However, as Robin Harper said, we have scientific fact. Why are crop trials going ahead anywhere when we know that they are damaging the environment? The herbicide that is being used causes reproduction problems in rats and problems with the nervous system in humans. We know that that herbicide is coming down the hill towards us. How would members feel in that situation?

Would that halt the FSEs now, or would we have to wait for the European Parliament Petitions Committee to deal with our petition before that happened?

A moratorium in Europe?

The farm-scale evaluations are an entirely Scottish issue. The Scottish Executive is the competent authority for dealing with part B consents.

A blanket ban on growing GM crops is different. A part C consent is a commercial licence under European legislation. There is no commercial licence for the oil-seed rape that is grown in Scotland at the moment; there are only part B consents, which are in the hands of the Scottish Executive. The Scottish Parliament information centre literature states that the Scottish Executive is the competent authority for part B consents.

Indeed. An authority, if I can use that word, called SCIMAC—the supply chain initiative on modified agricultural crops—designates the guidelines for the planting of the crops. Given that SCIMAC is a biotechnology industry body, the industry decides the guidelines for the planting of the crop. The farmer—farmer Grant—has broken the guidelines on numerous occasions, not least when he planted winter wheat within three days of harvesting last year's oil-seed rape trial. There is supposed to be a three-week gap so that any seeds that are shed in harvesting can regenerate themselves and be ploughed back in. That way there are fewer so-called volunteers—the oil-seed rape coming back through. Volunteers are coming through because Mr Grant left only three days between harvesting the trial crop and planting winter wheat. It is all very well to say that the fields have been sprayed, but we noticed the volunteers and pointed them out to the Scottish Agricultural Science Agency, which is supposed to be the regulatory authority. SCIMAC's response was that things were different in Scotland. If that is the case, why was Mr Grant still planting cereal crops in October and why are the consents not different in Scotland? The system is shambolic.

The problem does not apply only to Munlochy. Every mother has a child. I do not want a GM trial site next to my village, but I do not want it next to anybody else's village either. We have severe problems with the site. When the oil-seed rape flowers, we are worried about what it will do to people's health. We know that there are problems with herbicides as well.If the trial is not good for Munlochy, why would a trial be good for Newport and Aberdeen? The site at Munlochy is close to a population centre—it is less than a mile away. It is also in the middle of three sites of special scientific interest. However, that is not to say that there are not similar problems in Newport or Aberdeen.The science is untried and untested. The risk assessment has not been correctly done. There is no testing on human health. None of the local doctors has been involved. We have no baseline study. We do not even know the effects that GM foods are having on Americans, because no testing has been done in America, either.Because no baseline study has been done, if there was a huge incident in five years' time, we could not even track it back to GM. There is no risk assessment, but—let us be perfectly honest—risk should be assessed as new evidence comes in. To say that a risk assessment was done two years ago—or whenever it was that Ross Finnie first looked at the issue—is not good enough. Information comes in daily. In the past fortnight alone, three or four scientists have said in the press, "We don't want this. We don't want it because it is not science." That is the problem that I have. How do I know the effects that GM crops will have on people's health?I admit that Munlochy is where I come from and that I cherish it, but I care about other human beings as well, and I do not see why Newport or Aberdeen or anywhere else should have to put up with a trial. If it is not good enough for me and I do not want it, why should somebody else get it?

If you read what Ross Finnie said during the parliamentary debate when he was pushed on whether he could impose a ban, you will see that he havered slightly. He did not want to be pushed into a legal situation. It is worth while having a look at that debate. When the Transport and the Environment Committee discussed pulling trials under part B consents, it, too, was of the mind that the matter was properly one for the courts. What was so encouraging about the debate in the Scottish Parliament and the subsequent discussions in the Transport and the Environment Committee was the level of genuine concern. There was almost a feeling that, if there had been a little more political will, the trials could have been pulled.I support what Linda Martin said about health tests, which are very important. We can do environmental tests and all that kind of thing, but tests for human health are very important. The Transport and the Environment Committee recommended that far more research should be done. I urge this committee to consider that.

I was not attacking the minister; I was saying that the discussions in the Parliament, across the parties, have been encouraging and that we would like to encourage more discussions now.

Yes.

No. The issue of a blanket ban comes back to the part B and part C consents. We are not talking about commercialisation. The trials are an experimental release and, as far as we are aware and as far as the parliamentary documentation makes out, the Scottish Executive is the competent authority for part B releases. We are not talking about a blanket ban on commercial crops. Once a crop has a commercial licence in Europe, it can be grown anywhere by any farmer in Europe. That is a separate issue.

The Transport and the Environment Committee discussed all GM organism releases. That would involve part B and part C releases. We are talking about part B releases.

No.

Absolutely, as well as public outrage and protest. The trials started in January 2001 and we have seen what a shambles they are and what people think of them. There has also been plenty of new research.

Multinationals.

Yes. However, as Charles Saunders has spoken out about the uncertainty of the health effects, would it be possible for the Health and Community Care Committee to speak to some health experts about the lack of health monitoring? That issue is vital.

What happens to FSEs in the meantime? Do we have to sit there, watching the thing growing and breathing it in? Is that okay with the Scottish Parliament? Is that what we are being told?