SEB Bulletin March 2006 - Future Perspectives
Is there a future for GM crops in the UK?
Nigel G. Halford
Crop Performance and Improvement Division, Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, Hertfordshire AL5 2JQ
Rothamsted Research receives grant-aided support from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
We have now seen a decade of cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops and in his latest review, released on January 11th 2006, Clive James of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (www.isaaa.org) recorded another year of growth in the global adoption of GM varieties. In 2005, GM varieties were grown by 8.5 million farmers in 21 countries and covered 90 million hectares (222 million acres). Some unexpected countries have joined the party, with Iran cultivating GM rice for the first time in 2005, and three EU countries, Portugal, France and the Czech Republic, growing GM insect-resistant (Bt) maize either again after a break or for the first time. Spain and Germany also grew Bt maize in 2005; so much for Europe being a GM-free zone in terms of cultivation. However, the United Kingdom, despite a long-standing pre-eminent position in the underpinning plant molecular sciences, grew no GM varieties in 2005.
The history of the GM crop and food issue in the United Kingdom, from the first tentative marketing of GM tomato paste in 1996 (see right) through the annus horribilis of 1999 to the present situation, is a tortuous one. It has been a miserable decade not only for British plant biotechnologists, but for anyone who believes in enlightenment and rationalism.
Scientists have been accused of not being active enough in the debate on GM crops, but opposed by powerful multinational pressure groups (see below), the vast majority of the press, the BBC, Prince Charles and others it is unlikely that greater efforts by scientists would have made any difference. On the 26th of April 1999, the Daily Mail ran with the front-page headline 'Scientists Warn Of GM Crops Link To Meningitis', an outrageous claim that was later quietly withdrawn. Not much has changed; in January 2006 several newspapers claimed that pregnant women should not eat GM food, a story arising from a Russian report that has not been peer-reviewed and which the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes described as lacking 'detail essential to meaningful assessment of the results' (acnfp.gov.uk/acnfppapers/gmissues/acnfpgmsoya).
Faced with such headlines, and images such as those below, a scientific assessment of the risks and benefits is unlikely to sway public opinion. Incidentally, when I show these headlines and images to audiences of scientists they often raise a laugh. However, as I point out, these headlines and images 'won' the debate, at least for now, while science and rational argument lost (it was not even close!)
So is there a future for GM crops and food in the UK? The UK is in a kind of limbo on the issue. In 1999 I was addressing public meetings on GM crops twice a month, now it is once a year. The debate has gone quiet because the public believe that GM crops have 'gone away'. However, people in the food and feed industries will quietly tell you that at some point things will have to change. Non-GM soybean is already difficult to source and likely to become impossible to source now that Brazil has authorized the growing of herbicide-tolerant GM soybean, unless the industry is prepared to pay a hefty premium. There is no obvious alternative crop for use in animal feeds and processed foods.
Opponents of GM crops point out that few traits have reached the market so far and that by far and away the most successful impart herbicide tolerance or insect resistance, traits aimed at farmers rather than consumers (a bad thing, apparently). Another decade on, things may be different, with traits imparting resistance to drought, salt and disease possibly being in commercial use, as well as varieties with enhanced nutrition for first world consumers (e.g. containing long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids or sterols) and the developing world (e.g. with increased levels of vitamins and available iron). GM crops are also being developed for non-food uses, producing starches and oils for industrial uses, vaccines and pharmaceutical drugs.
How soon we will see current and future GM crop varieties being grown here is difficult to predict. The process of obtaining 'Part C' consent for the cultivation of a GM crop in Europe is currently expensive and prolonged and, despite the excellent safety record of GM crops, there is no prospect of the regulations being relaxed in the foreseeable future. Even if 'Part C' consent is granted by the European Commission, national governments can find ways of erecting further obstacles to commercial cultivation. Several countries within the EU maintain a ban on GM crops in defiance of the Commission, while in 2000 the UK government, faced with the possibility of herbicide-tolerant GM maize, oilseed rape and sugar beet being grown in the UK, announced a three-year programme of farm-scale evaluations of the varieties in question before consent for commercialization could be granted.
The management regimes that were examined in the studies were extremely narrow; no attempt was made to assess no-till systems, for example, even though these have been used extensively with herbicide-tolerant GM varieties in the USA and have reportedly brought substantial environmental benefits. Even so, the GM maize variety with the associated gluphosinate treatment gave relatively poor weed control and was therefore deemed 'better' for the environment than the non-GM variety. Still faced with huge public hostility on the issue, the UK Government announced that it agreed in principle to the commercial cultivation of the maize variety but that a number of constraints would be placed on its use. Shortly after, Bayer, the company that had developed the variety, announced that in view of the further period of delay it was not worth proceeding with commercialization. Bayer, Monsanto and Syngenta are rumoured to be preparing to push for commercialization of GM oilseed rape and sugar beet in the UK in 2008. However, not surprisingly, the main focus of the plant biotech industry at present is to obtain consent for the import of GM crop products grown elsewhere.
Historically, industries that have resisted innovation have always gone to the wall, and that must be a concern for the UK plant breeding and agricultural industries. If and when a sea change in public opinion does come, plant breeders and farmers may find themselves competing with low-input GM varieties that they do not have access to. Small plant breeding companies in the USA survived by breeding GM traits into their own varieties, under licence. UK plant breeders will have to be prepared to do the same.