Nanotechnologies and Food: Science and Technology Committee Report

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Selborne]

My Lords, the whole House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. It is not easy to explain just how small a nanoparticle is, but I think he put that into perspective. I am enlightened to know that you can get 300 million nanoparticles on the head of a pin; that is a useful bit of information. Noble Lords will gather that we were very well served by our Chairman; I was very privileged to serve on this sub-committee. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, with his experience at the Food Standards Agency, could not have been better equipped to undertake the chairing of this really quite complicated but very important subject.

I see this report in a historical context. History, I suppose, is a rather rough description when this science, as noble Lords heard, is very recent, but in 2004, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, reminded us, the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering produced a very helpful report that set out the ground rules for how this new technology might be underpinned by appropriate research. You cannot, after all, regulate a new industry unless you have adequate research and understanding of just what is happening. Later, there was the report from the Council for Science and Technology in 2007, and the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution in 2008 reported on novel materials. All these reports have been very significant, and there is clearly much expectation in them of nanotechnologies. We dealt only with food, which is a relatively narrow area, but the 2004 report anticipated—correctly, as it turned out, because we are already seeing it—that nanomaterials in a wider context were likely to become commonplace, and recommended that research into health, safety and environmental impacts should keep pace with predicted developments. This research is so important, again as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, very helpfully pointed out, because, when you start using materials at this scale, they simply do not behave as you would normally expect them to. His example of melting silver with a hairdryer, as opposed to at 960 degrees Celsius normally, demonstrates that you are talking about something that is not as you would expect.

The other conclusion I came to after reading this report was that there is every reason to believe that nanotechnology, provided that health and safety issues can be addressed and quantified, will be put to some extremely helpful uses in the food industry. We are not yet there, but as we have heard already, if you can reduce salt and fats in foods, nanotechnology has obvious advantages. I recognise that ice cream with many times less fat is an extraordinarily marketable commodity; I would certainly be very interested in that. Better packaging and materials, increased shelf life, the reduced use of active ingredients and agrochemicals; it seems to me perfectly reasonable to anticipate these and many other applications.

The 2004 report, which got off to a good start a debate that is beginning to flounder, suggested that,

“the UK Research Councils assemble an interdisciplinary centre … to undertake research into the toxicity, epidemiology, persistence and bioaccumulation of manufactured nanoparticles and nanotubes, to work on exposure pathways and to develop measurement methods”.

The then Government did not adopt this recommendation. They continued to fund research into nanotechnologies through the established channels of grants through Research Councils UK and government departments, usually in response mode but with publicly funded nanotechnologies research co-ordinated through the Nanotechnology Research Coordination Group. When that body started out in November 2005, it published a helpful report that identified 19 research objectives grouped into five areas—we are talking of all nanotechnologies here—one of which was human toxicology.

It is disappointing to find that Defra sponsored a report last year that reviewed how many of these research objectives had been fulfilled by the Nanotechnology Research Coordination Group. The answer, particularly on the issue of human toxicology, is that a substantial amount of work remains to be done. The Defra review states that there have been,

“no systematic studies on the potential of different kinds of nanoparticles to get into the blood, the lymph or the brain”.

Our report comments—rather restrainedly, I think:

“We find this conclusion worrying”.

The Medical Research Council was assigned responsibility for research objective 11, which was to undertake:

“Research to establish a clear understanding of the adsorption of nanoparticles via the lung, skin and gut and their distribution in the body … identifying potential target organs/tissues for toxicity assessment”.

The Defra review concluded that,

“a … largely un-researched area is ingestion as a route of exposure … Given the potential for this route to expose very large numbers of individuals … the lack of activity in this area is surprising”.

This time our report comments:

“We find this lack of progress extremely concerning”.

It is not as if we have not had warnings in the interim. In 2007 the Council for Science and Technology’s report also drew attention to the Government’s slow progress on health and safety research, and said that this was due to an overreliance by government on responsive mode funding rather than directed programmes by government departments to deliver the necessary research. That is logical, is it not? If you wait in responsive mode and there happen to be no research workers applying for research funding in this area, you will not get your gaps filled. You need a bit of direction occasionally. That simply has not happened, which is why there is concern.

I ask my noble friend the Minister not for more money—that would clearly be unreasonable—but simply for the considerable sums of money that are spent on nanotechnology research to be partially reallocated, even in small measure, so that the health and safety issues are adequately addressed. The amount of money that we are talking about is very small compared with the development of these new technologies.

In 2007-08 I chaired a working group of stakeholders charged with drafting a voluntary code on good practice for organisations involved in the supply chain for nanotechnologies. The group included research organisations such as the Royal Society through to retailers, trade unions, consumer groups, and of course companies interested in nanotechnologies. We produced a draft nano code that was accepted with a degree of enthusiasm by all the stakeholders. The repeated mantra in all this was “Transparency, accessibility and accountability”—you cannot repeat it too often. Never hide from the public any shortcomings in the scientific knowledge—there are always some. Never try to persuade the public that the risks are less than might otherwise be thought. Be honest. This is something that the Food Standards Agency got off to a good start with after so many food scares when the regulatory authority was the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

It is disappointing to find that this fundamental lesson does not appear to have been adopted by the food industry, either here or in America. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, talked about the food industry not putting its head above the parapet. Somebody has to put their head above the parapet. I understand why the food industry would like a ringmaster—someone to co-ordinate the dialogue—but it is absolutely essential that such a dialogue takes place. It is essential that all stakeholders participate. It would be fine if the Food Standards Agency could be the ringmaster, but my main plea is that this public dialogue should be engaged in quickly.