Biotechnology and Food Security

George Freeman Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

I apologise for being a few moments late, Mr Streeter, and I thank you for calling me to speak and giving me the chance to contribute to this important debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) on securing the debate. Like my hon. Friend and others here today, I believe that the subject is rather more important than is suggested by the coverage that it receives in the Chamber. Perhaps this debate is a precursor to a bigger one on the Floor of the House.

I speak as a new Member who had a career in biotechnology. I dealt mainly in biomedical technology venture capital, but come from a farming background and once, many years ago, worked for the National Farmers Union in policy development. I have long taken an interest in the subject, and I believe that there would be substantial public interest in it if enough of us were prepared to talk about it in the right way, as my hon. Friend did so eloquently this morning.

To that end, Mr Streeter, I declare an interest. I worked in biotechnology for 14 years, and I have a number of small shareholdings in small companies which are all declared in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I serve as a non-executive adviser to Elsoms seeds, Britain’s last independent family-owned seeds business, and to the Norwich research park where some of our leading agricultural science is being carried out.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood spoke eloquently about the huge opportunities of biotechnology and the huge challenges faced by the Government, Parliament and the country in the years ahead, given the pace of globalisation and population growth and the enormous pressure on farmers around the world to grow more from less. He mentioned projections for explosive population growth and the huge pressure to reduce inputs, particularly energy and water that will result—and, I might add, the potential for those problems to lead to serious geopolitical tensions. If we look around the world today, we see that underlying some of the most acute regional conflicts are issues to do with poverty and with tensions around resources. Therefore, this is about not just science and agriculture but geopolitics and major issues around international security.

Like my hon. Friend, I feel strongly that agricultural biotechnology holds enormous potential to help us solve some of the biggest issues that face our generation. Moreover, it is a matter that transcends party boundaries, and I suspect that we shall hear much of that from the Opposition Benches this morning.

Let me highlight three personal experiences that endorse my hon. Friend’s comments. I have recently had the great privilege to visit the John Innes centre and to see the work that is going on to develop a blight-resistant potato. If we were to explain properly that stunning piece of technology to the public and to the people who do their weekly shop in the supermarkets, they would quickly understand the benefits. The technology would enable us to grow blight-resistant potatoes without having to use the 14 different applications of pesticide that are currently required. There would be huge environmental benefits with massive reductions in energy input into agriculture in the field. That is British technology, developed in this country, and it has enormous global potential. We should be proud of it; we should be talking more about it and celebrating it.

I also had a chance last summer to see another wonderful piece of work at the John Innes centre. Scientists are looking back through historical wheat varieties and cross-breeding varieties of wheat from different parts of the world. In one case, they have taken traditional Afghan breeds with short stems that are well adapted to grow in the Afghan climate and genetically manipulated them—others would describe it as cross-breeding them, which is what people have been doing in agriculture for thousands of years. They have been trying to produce a short-stemmed wheat crop that is well adapted to grow in Afghan conditions but with a much higher yield. Imagine the geopolitical implication that that would have for helping our development and military objectives in Afghanistan. Such a project provides a very good example of the technologies that we are developing in this country.

In my capacity as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on science and technology in agriculture, I met two delegations from Brazil and Uganda. The Ugandan delegation was led by a gentleman who is pioneering the use of biotechnology in the banana industry in Uganda. In Brazil, the delegation comprised a huge consortium of soya bean farmers. It was pioneering not just the application but the science and research of genetic technology in the soya bean sector, with huge environmental and economic advantages. I confess to having been taken aback by the scale, professionalism and the commercial application of these technologies in countries that we sometimes refer to in this House as the developing world. Such countries are more than developing, they are very developed, and they are trading with each other very fast and growing into a position of global leadership. Although we should be proud of the science that we have in this country, we are in danger of lagging behind in the application, commercialisation and international roll-out of such technologies. I know that the Minister feels strongly, and has talked eloquently, about that.

Biotechnology sits right at the heart of this coalition Government’s programme in so many ways. First, on the environmental agenda, the Prime Minister has spoken eloquently about this Government being the greenest Government ever, and agriculture biotechnology sits at the heart of that. Secondly, the Government have set out a radical programme for growth, rebalancing the economy and reducing our dependence on financial arbitrage in the City. I argue that investing in and backing British science and technology companies would give our City financiers more substantial things to invest in and to back and it would do wonders for our growth potential.

Biotechnology sits at the heart of the health agenda. If we are to develop the healthy society that we all crave and to get into health prevention, we need to explore some of the enormous benefits and economic opportunities that come from functional foods and nutraceuticals. If we put our traditional strength in food—retailing, manufacturing and processing—and combine it with our science, this country could lead the world in what I believe is a coming revolution in functional foods and nutraceuticals.

The Government have, rightly, put overseas development at the heart of their programme. Biotechnology can help the developing world to move away from its dependence on aid and to strengthen its development through trade. This is a vital agenda that sits right at the heart of the coalition Government’s programme in so many ways.

Given the economic potential and the political and international importance of biotechnology, it is odd that the debate in this country is so skewed by a very noisy, cynical and, at times, hysterical anti-science lobby that is given too much air time. All of us who understand the power of this technology need to speak up, as we are today, and explain the benefits. There has been quite a lot of public concern about some of these technologies—my hon. Friend referred to stem cells, with which I am familiar. My own experience in biomedical science is that once the benefits are clear—and nothing focuses the mind like the prospect of having one’s life doubled in length by heart surgery—and, crucially, the public are satisfied that an appropriate regulatory framework is in place, which means trust in this House and trust in the process and regulation of science, there is the potential to unlock public support for this revolution. We must concentrate on the benefits of such technologies and have a cross-party commitment to transparent regulation. It is crucial that we are science led and evidence based. We must take scientific evidence properly and create a framework for policy making that is science led, on which, I know, the Minister is strong.

I enjoy knocking on doors and saying to voters in my constituency, “Aren’t you excited by the technology that is being developed just across the boundary in Norwich at the research park? Imagine, madam, what a blight-free potato would do for the environment, the bird life in our hedgerows in Norfolk, productivity, Norfolk’s farmers, the quality of the food you eat and for the world potential for trade and development.” Unless we say such things, the consumers are not aware of the benefits. If we speak up, we will find that there is huge popular support and that the sometimes hysterical media coverage does not adequately or correctly reflect public opinion.

I will finish there because I know that Members are waiting for the Minister’s comments.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)]

Good morning, Mr Streeter. It is good to serve under your chairmanship. I welcome this debate and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) on securing it and raising the issue of food security. He highlighted, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) and the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain), the challenges that the world will face during the next few decades.

I was going to refer to Professor Beddington’s comments about the perfect storm, but as the hon. Member for Glasgow North East has already done so, I will not repeat them. It is clear from this debate and many others that there is a growing recognition that many issues are coming together: climate change, population increase, population prosperity, and the consequent demand for more and better-quality food and the problem that due to climate change, some arable land may cease to be suitable for arable production. The coming together of those issues creates a huge challenge that affects many areas: the European situation, the single market, the competitiveness of our production and the interface between food science and our approach to innovation and technology, on which much of this debate has focused.

This is an important debate. I was impressed by the opening comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood about the desire to have a serious debate that eliminates much of the emotion, and indeed the emotional nonsense, that we sometimes hear, avoids the over-generalisation and simplification incorporated in many comments and addresses the issue seriously. The Government’s overall policy is to enhance the competitiveness and resilience of our food chain and, as I have said repeatedly, to reverse the decline in UK production.

However, we seem to be in an invidious position. The hon. Member for Glasgow North East referred to global food prices, specifically the spike of two years ago and the current all-time high. Obviously, one concern is the impact that that is having on the ability of consumers, particularly poorer consumers, to sustain a reasonable diet. Back home, Finance Ministers and Chancellors around the world are concerned about its inflationary impact. Yet at the same time, the rise in global food prices is in many ways a direct consequence of moving agricultural policy, not just in Europe but elsewhere, closer to the world market situation rather than maintaining the sorts of protectionist arrangement used in the past. Many have always argued that consumers overpay for food under the common agricultural policy, but now that we are not subsidising food production, they pay even more. Some of the simplistic arguments used in the past are not very accurate.

Some people argue that what we do in the UK is of little consequence as agriculture is not a big industry, and that in global terms we do not need to worry very much about it. I emphasise that that is not the Government’s view. The whole food chain contributes some £85 billion per annum to our economy, or 7% of gross domestic product, as well as 3 million jobs. Food manufacturing is the biggest individual manufacturing sector. It plays a major role in delivering our economic growth and, obviously, in the environmental impact of our food industry, so we want to support it in any way we can.

The long-term challenges that we have been discussing also offer great market and productivity opportunities for our agriculture. Achieving our food security objectives sustainably is also important to achieving the biodiversity outcomes that we all want to achieve, such as the convention on biological diversity to which we signed up in Nagoya a few weeks ago and, closer to home, our climate change objectives and millennium development goals.

As most Members have said, there is obviously a great EU angle on the issue, and I will return to that in a few moments in the context of genetically modified foods. As my hon. Friends have said, we have already achieved a tremendous amount in the 50 or 60 years since the second world war and the food shortages that caused countries in different parts of the world to develop their own forms of policy. Our guaranteed price system was introduced in 1947, and the EU intervention system was introduced when the common market was first formed.

The varieties of our major crop plants have improved massively. Initially, they improved predominantly in yield, then in disease resistance and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk said, in suitability for different climates, pest resistance and other aspects. That has all been achieved, but biotechnology opens up a whole new range of possibilities. The term “biotechnology”, as he also said, covers a multiplicity of different techniques. GM is often described, but biotechnology also includes genomics, cloning, the use of enzymes, marker-assisted selection and gene sequencing. As with all science, it is moving faster and faster. In the 1990s, the characterisation of the human genome took 10 years; our current technology could do it in two days. That is the rate of acceleration in scientific development.

There is no doubt that biotechnology has huge potential to provide quicker and more efficient developments in plant breeding. Biochemical or DNA testing can identify specific genes responsible for different traits, and biotechnologies such as marker-assisted selection or genetic modification offer further tools for ensuring that such genes can be used. However, it is important to emphasise that whatever aspect of biotechnology we consider, Government policy must be science-led and science-based. There should be no other basis for it.

The different technologies that I have listed pose different challenges. Some, like marker-assisted selection, do not seem to pose any risks and create little public concern. Others, such as GM, have raised concerns. Obviously, health and environmental safety must be absolute priorities when we consider GM technology. I believe that the combination of EU and UK risk assessment and regulatory regimes demonstrate that, and that we will proceed on that basis using the latest available evidence.

Much of this debate and many of the understandable challenges posed to me by the hon. Member for Glasgow North East relate to research. He knows full well the answers to some of the questions that he has asked me. I do not criticise him for that; it is a traditional form of opposition, as he knows that I cannot answer some of them. However, I will try to respond to all the points made.

I emphasise that the Government are spending about £400 million a year on agriculture and food research and are working directly with industry to support competitiveness and innovation in food through the Technology Strategy Board’s sustainable agriculture and food innovation platform, which the Labour Government introduced. That was a good idea and a good innovation. Funded jointly by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Technology Strategy Board is investing up to £90 million over five years to provide match funding to industry for technological research and development. I cannot narrow down precisely how much of that is spent on GM, but it is part of the totality of spending.

On the wider issue of research spending, as the hon. Gentleman knows, clearly research could not be immune to the pressures of reducing the public deficit, but the fact that the Government have maintained spending in cash terms over the whole spending review demonstrates the importance that we attach to it commensurate with all the other demands for public spending.

The hon. Gentleman rightly referred to the private sector. Obviously, what the TSB is doing with match funding is important, but the role of the private sector must continue to increase. In fact, a large proportion of the development of GM technology has occurred in the private sector. That is the reality of where it has come from. We can be pretty critical of how at least one major plant breeder has handled the public relations aspect, which has caused some of the problems with public opinion on GM.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk mentioned the John Innes centre in Norwich, and the National Institute of Agricultural Botany is based in my constituency. Both are freestanding research organisations that are doing a tremendous amount of work. Some of their project work is funded by the Government, but much of it is funded by outside organisations.

[George Freeman]

On the question of funding for science, I endorse the Minister’s point about the relative protection for science funding provided in the recent settlement. My experience of talking with science research institutes is that they recognise that in a time when Government funding is severely constrained, the Government have done as much as could be expected to protect the core research budget. The point I want to make relates to the technology innovation centres, which are part of the Government’s policy for promoting integration between research and the private sector. Does the Minister agree that there might be a case for having a food science-related TIC to try to pull together our strengths in places such as Norwich, Reading, Liverpool and other centres that might otherwise fall between the stools?

[Mr Paice]

My hon. Friend puts his finger on an important point. As he knows well, there is already a huge amount of collaboration between the organisations I have mentioned and other important plant science centres, but it is an area where one can never do too much. I entirely share his overall approach, which is that we need to do all we can to ensure that we deliver the maximum benefit and that there is no risk of duplication.

Before speaking specifically on GM, I wish to pick up on a couple of points that the hon. Member for Glasgow North East made on bioethanol, biofuels and their sustainability. I appreciate his point about the measures that we have already taken on palm oil. I am afraid that I cannot give him a figure off the top of my head for research into second generation ethanol and biofuels, but I will be happy to write to him on that, and on EU spend, with all the information I can give.

That obviously leads to the question of CAP reform and where we go from here. I entirely share the hon. Gentleman’s view that we must concentrate CAP resources on moving agriculture forward, rather than on our current direct payment system—there is a degree of unanimity across the Benches on that—although in no way do we propose that the direct payment system should go in the short term, as that would destroy agriculture as we know it in this country. Clearly, however, we want to see a gradual shift away from that to more clearly identifiable public benefits, and in our view R and D is a key part of that. We definitely want to see more CAP expenditure spent on R and D, and I can assure him that that is part of our approach to reform, although it is terribly early days—we probably have a two or three-year programme of debate and discussion.

I will now turn specifically to genetic modification, an area of huge emotion and oversimplification. GM involves the insertion of foreign genes carrying a specific trait into an existing plant. It is the only technique—I differ slightly with my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood on his description of this point—that allows one to cross-breed genetic material from unrelated organisms, which means overcoming a specific barrier. It is not just a case of speeding up what would happen anyway, but involves doing things that could happen in nature only by a completely unpredictable mutation. The insect resistance that has been bred into maize, which has been of huge economic value to the industry, was achieved by taking a gene from a completely unrelated plant. The same was the case with the early work that made oilseed rape and soya resistant to the chemical glyphosate, thus allowing the overall crop to be sprayed. That required a gene from a plant that was resistant to be inserted into a plant that was not, so that it became resistant.

There is a great risk of over-generalising, and those who call for a moratorium or freeze on all GM work are missing the point. Every individual trait must be separately assessed and tested, and my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood is right about the importance of field testing before deciding whether to allow commercial production to proceed, because each is a unique development and one cannot make those generalisations.

I am afraid, Mr Streeter, that I am taking advantage of the fact that I have a little more time than is normally available, but I think that these are key issues. It is important to recognise that the traits that are the subject of GM are moving themselves. Critics saw the early tests as a way of simply putting more money into the hands of chemical companies or farmers, but we are now beginning to see traits in GM that are more relevant to the consumer and the wider community, such as the work on genes that encourage high omega fats in oilseed rape and other plants. Drought resistance and the ability of plants to grow with much less water have been referred to. That will be of huge benefit to the developing world in the short term, but because of climate change it could also become far more relevant in this country. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood suggested, the holy grail in such research is to breed a grain that is leguminous. That brings us back to sustainability, which must be a cornerstone of agricultural development in coming years.

The Government are close to finalising our overall policy on GM. It is a sensitive issue and obviously there are many views. We want to get it right, so the debate and the speeches that have been made this morning are timely. It is not desperately urgent, although we need to move on quickly. No commercial GM crops are being grown in this country at present. We had two research trials last year, one by the Sainsbury laboratory on blight-resistant potatoes and one by Leeds university on nematode-resistant potatoes. The issue of vandalism was raised in the debate, and I am pleased to say that those trials were not attacked—security for them was paid by BBSRC, and a little was paid by DEFRA. I share my hon. Friend’s view that if we want to know whether there is a risk with those crops we need to test them, rather than rip them up in the first place. I want to assure the House that if we decide to approve the planting of GM crops, it will be based not only on science, but on strict criteria for crop segregation, both in the field and post-harvest, together with effective rules and protocols on the liability that comes from that, and my hon. Friend referred rightly to organic farm production in that context.

One issue is particularly topical—imported animal feed. The world price of grain and soya has rocketed in recent months, meaning that our livestock producers are facing immense problems in obtaining sufficient volumes of GM-free soya, which is what they have to use. That is partly because the current EU rules for the import of soya do not allow for any contamination by an unapproved GM product, which means that most shippers are unwilling to take the risk because the detection of even the slightest amount of GM product would mean that the whole consignment was rejected. The EU has tabled a proposal that would effectively set a 0.1% tolerance level in grain imports for certain GM materials that were not yet approved in the EU, but that were in the approval process. That seems to be a common-sense way of proceeding that would reduce the risks posed to grain imports by the present rules. No decision has been made and we are looking at the detail of the proposal before the vote in February. As I have said, we think it is eminently sensible.

Insect-resistant maize and starch potatoes are being grown commercially elsewhere and other crops are in the regulatory pipeline. Overall, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood said, Europe grows far fewer GM crops than most of the rest of the world. Those crops now cover more than 9% of the world’s arable land—an area five times the size of the UK—and involve 25 countries. We cannot ignore those facts. That has all happened in about 10 years, and production is rocketing year on year.

It is clear that many farmers see the advantages of using GM, and many experts such as those at the Royal Society believe that it could provide benefits if it is used safely and responsibly. However, it is not a panacea. We should not kid ourselves that GM will be the answer to all our problems—the answer to Professor Beddington’s perfect storm—but it could well be one of the tools that we need to address the longer-term challenges of global food security, climate change and making agriculture more sustainable.

That is why the Government are determined to move forward with these issues. We do not believe that we can put our hand up and say “stop” to science at any point. We have to see what scientific development is producing, and ensure that it is safe for humans and the environment and that we have the necessary robust evidence on which to make decisions. We believe that GM has a potential benefit in the context of food security, and we are looking hard at developing a final policy to enable it to be realised.

Few people have referred to the role of the consumer, which is critical in all of this. The law already states that any foodstuff that contains genetically modified material has to declare it if the GM in a particular ingredient exceeds 0.9%. My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood mentioned pizza. If more than 0.9% of the soya—not the pizza but the soya in the pizza—is GM, it has to be declared.

Consumers have information with which to make their choices. Sadly, as my hon. Friend and others have said, those choices are often influenced by emotion based on some rather hysterical press notices. I hope that this fairly short but important discussion will enable us to move the debate on. It is more the format in which it ought to be carried on, and I hope that the more serious parts of our media will engage in genuine discussion and debate about the benefits of using and potential concerns about GM products.

Sir John Beddington will be publishing the foresight study, “Global Food and Farming Futures”, in two or three weeks’ time. I cannot say much about it as I do not want to pre-empt what he will say, but I know that the report will have a great deal to say about the role of GM in future food production.

Mr Streeter, I am sorry for usurping the opportunity to speak longer than is normal in these debates, but this is an important issue. GM has an important role to play in our future food security, for all the reasons that colleagues on both sides of the Chamber have given, but we have to take precautions. We must ensure that individual elements are properly assessed and measured before we take risks with either our food safety or our environment. As I said, my Government hope to introduce our own overall proposals in the near future. I am grateful to you for chairing this debate and to my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood for raising it.