Manufacturing Consensus
by Sujatha Byravan

Later this year, the government of the United Kingdom will decide whether or not to permit the commercial planting of genetically modified (GM) crops.

Whatever the outcome, its circumstances have already generated great controversy. The administration of Prime Minister Tony Blair has been widely criticized for favoring GM from the start, and for attempting to exclude skeptics from higher levels of the decision-making process; nevertheless, their evaluation has been conducted with far more rigor than in any other nation where genetically modified crops are currently planted. Independent research was conducted on the environmental and economic impacts of commercial GM agriculture — research which has so far concluded that GM has few, if any, economic benefits, and could threaten to biodiversity. However, the evaluation of GM was hardly restricted to a handful of scientists. Over the last year, the UK government held more than five hundred public meetings, where supporters and critics of commericial GM debated each another and answered attendees’ questions.

By comparison, when the United States' Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considered GM in 1992, the public was not involved at all — and the FDA even ignored the doubts of its own scientists, choosing instead to adopt the industry-friendly policy of 'substantial equivalence,' a thoroughly unscientific position which asserts that objects similar in basic composition are, for all practical purposes, the same.

Overseeing the United Kingdom's GM evaluation was Michael Meacher, a Labour Member of Parliament since 1970 and Environment Minister from May, 1997 until June of this year, when Tony Blair replaced him with Margaret Beckett. Though Meacher's uncompromising devotion to environmental issues, particularly global warming, had made him the subject of increasing marginalization under the Blair administration, it is believed that his criticism of GM crops — which, it should be noted, he only developed after the results of studies became apparent — was responsible for his firing.

Michael Meacher spoke at the Council for Responsible Genetics on September 19, 2003. Following is the transcript of a discussion he had with Sujatha Byravan, the Council's Executive Director.

CRG: Could you describe for us the political and social context in which the United Kingdom’s government undertook a process of broad public review on genetically modified (GM) foods? I don’t think that has taken place in any other country — certainly not in the United States.

Michael Meacher: That happened because we were contemplating, within my department, how we were going to handle the whole process of commercializing GM crops. My officials told me there were really four options. One, we could decide to have unfettered GM commercialization: no restraints, with everyone allowed to plant GM as they please. The other alternative would be to forbid GM completely — but no one believed we would make that choice. In between are the two serious alternatives: either you have heavy regulation, in a very stringent manner, or you have a sort of ‘light touch’ regulation.

I thought, “it’s not for me to make a decision, nor for government officials; we should consult the people. What do the people feel about GM?” It was then decided that there would be a public debate. It is very important to use this word, because I would use the word ‘consultation’ — but some of our ministerial colleagues were not willing to have a consultation, because that has an aura of counting heads, and they knew as well as I did that the balance of public
opinion is roughly five to one against GM.

If you have a consultation and five times more people say they’re opposed than say they want it, people will turn around and say, “We’ve consulted the people, and it’s five to one against, so don’t go ahead.” My ministerial colleagues didn’t want to put themselves in a position where anyone could say, “the people have spoken; this is what you’ve got to do.” So they called the process a public debate.
The government would listen, they said, and learn.

I’m not sure about that. Sometimes, I think the government is going to go ahead and do what it wants regardless. But, at any rate, the sensible position was to have a public debate: we would be informing the public, who obviously didn’t know a lot of the details about genetic modification, and we would listen to their opinions and take them into account.

Then you have to ask the question: what does ‘taking into account’ actually mean? It’s hard to say. The government would not say, “Well, we are taking into account that the majority of the people are against GM crops. They don’t want us to do it.”

It’s all about semantics and slogans. It’s not a very exact process, because it was never intended to be. We had a public debate because the government felt it was the best way to produce an agreement. Unless we did have some kind of public debate or consultation — call it what you like — we would never get the GM decision through.

But a poll was not really part of it.

There were three parts to the entire GM commercialization process, of which a poll was absolutely not one.

First, there was a look at the economics of GM, which was done by Tony Blair’s strategy unit. Their conclusion was that there existed at the present time no favorable economic case for GM in the UK, because there are no markets for it. Secondly, there was an examination of the science of GM. It was undertaken by a panel, chaired by the government’s chief scientific officer. The people on it were generally much more skeptical of GM than most officials. They managed to have included in the report their concerns that there had been no health testing of GM; that what environmental testing there had been was inadequate; and that real and unanswered questions exist about the co-existence of modified and non-modified crops. The third part of the whole process was the actual public debate.

Who ran the debate?

The GM Debate Steering Board, chaired by Malcom Grant. Their report is going to come out on September 24th. I think we’re going to find that the findings of the public debate were quite critical. [The report was released. It officially found that people in the UK are generally uneasy about GM crops, and express little support for its early commercialization. Moreover, the report described widespread public mistrust of both the UK government and transnational agricultural biotech companies.—Editor]

Grant invited people to come to meetings, of which there were probably about five hundred altogether in the course of two or three months. They were totally open to the public, and usually featured someone speaking for GM and someone speaking against it. There would then be discussions. People would answer technical questions, and people would listen to opinions. At the end, when people dispersed, they were given a response sheet. If they chose to, they could fill them out and send them back to the panel. In the end, I think 30,000 were returned. I think that is quite a lot. And the balance of opinion was about five to one against — exactly what the polls say.
So despite the fact that the government didn’t want a poll, in a sense there was one.

And so, as you were saying earlier, the decision on whether to commercialize GM crops in the UK will be made about six months from now. What do you think will happen?

My best estimate is that, though they recognize that there is deep opposition, the government, led by Tony Blair — who is certainly pro-GM — will take the position that we have no reason not to accept genetically modified crops.

I don’t think that’s true. They could choose to exercise the precautionary principle, since not enough testing has been done,
neither in terms of health or environmental consequences. They could say, “We have no grounds on which we could receive this, so we are going to proceed very slowly.” They could restrict the number of initial applications, and start with the simplest, which would be very stringently regulated.

I think we should be very cautious, and listen to people. But instead it looks as though we will go by trial and error. Every conceivable qualification will be put there to satisfy public opinion, but the government’s core decision is: We’re going to go ahead with GM, and succeed. That’s where I think we are. But it could change in the course of six months if the situation in Iraq, the late David Kelly affair, and other events continue eroding the public credibility of Tony Blair.

If they do approve GM, do you anticipate a lot of public opposition?

Were that to happen, yes. How far that opposition would be taken, I can’t be certain. I do know that when we had the small-scale evaluation trials, with around one hundred fields filled with GM crops, a large number of them were vandalized. When the people who vandalized them were taken to court, the courts refused to convict them. The courts supported what these people were doing. We might see further vandalism of fields. I don’t approve of this, but it could happen.

I think an approval would intensify the movement to reject GM. People still won’t buy it, and there will be a lot of pressure put on the retailers, who — in the end — don’t have an ideology about GM; they just want to sell food. With all the opposition to GM, they won’t stock it.

The agricultural companies will do everything possible to make the spread of GM possible. They will lower the price to make it more attractive. They will say they have official government support — that the government says GM is safe and good for you. But nobody believes the government any more.

There will be a huge advertising campaign; there will be a great charm offensive. They’ll select people to come up in the media who purport to be independent authorities and experts, and they will all say what a good thing GM is. They’ll say it’s the answer to world hunger, and that it is indeed good for you.

Do you think GM will solve world hunger?

I find that belief absurd. First of all, there is enough food in the world to feed everyone — it’s just grossly maldistributed. In the West, we have a large amount of food, and we throw an awful lot of it away. The problem isn’t a lack of food — it’s that people are too poor to grow it or buy it.

A lot of developing countries continue to be held in a very subordinate position in world trading networks because they are overdependent on certain commodities. Some of them are very badly governed. In some countries the population is growing very rapidly, and land continues to be hugely maldistributed. That’s what needs to be changed. The role of GM in this is tiny.

Earlier you made a point about the infiltration of regulatory agencies here in the United States by those who occupy key positions in corporate agriculture. Do you see something similar happening in the UK?

Not to the same extent. As a minister, I vetoed every appointment to an advisory committee of someone who currently or recently had a significant commercial or financial link with the industry. But other ministers were much more sanguine about this. They still try to justify this by saying, “These are the best people; if you veto them, you won’t get people of the same quality.” That’s nonsense. I believe you can find people of high quality who don’t have links with the industry that cast in doubt their judgment or objectivity.