GM Food Technologies

Debate between George Freeman and Simon Hart

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Betts. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon and to have this opportunity to talk about a subject that is of increasing importance, both to the globe and to this country, and that merits the very highest attention in this Parliament. It is the subject of our food science, agricultural research and in particular the potential of genetically modified food and other genetic and breeding technologies to support this very important sector. If I have time this afternoon, I will say why I believe it is such an important subject and why we should debate it now and in this Parliament.

However, I should start by declaring something of an interest. I come from a farming and agricultural background. I never actually worked in agriculture; that fate narrowly escaped me. Before coming to Parliament, I had a 15-year career in biomedical research in health care. Through that work, I have some experience of the genetic sciences and their potential to deliver good, albeit in the health care sector rather than in the food sector. I also have some experience of the very difficult ethical, moral and scientific issues that new technologies often throw up, and of the importance of Parliament being able to debate those issues properly, clearly, openly and well, and to build trust in an appropriate regulatory framework in order to build public support.

I declare an interest as someone who has worked in this sector and I draw Members’ attention to one or two shareholdings in one or two very small and unprofitable companies. I also declare something of a constituency interest. My constituency of Mid Norfolk is rural. That is not to say that everyone there works in agriculture, but it has a strong rural background and a strong agricultural heritage. We sit between Cambridge and Norwich. At the moment, my constituency is something of a rural backwater, located between those two phenomenal centres of science and technology. What is very striking to me as the local MP in an area where average annual incomes are £17,000, which is well below the national average, is the lack of public discussion about the potential of technologies that are developed in our area, particularly in Norwich at the Norwich Research Park. When I talk to people on the doorsteps about some of these technologies and their potential to do good around the world and in the UK, I am always struck by how surprised people are that we are not debating them and talking about them more openly.

I have also served as a non-executive director of Elsoms Seeds, a small, family-owned seed business, which does not actually have any involvement in GM but has a long and proud history of pioneering seed development in the agricultural sector. For a while, I served as an adviser to the Norwich Research Park. I mention that because, as many of my expert colleagues in the room know, it is something of a centre in UK food science, with the Institute of Food Research and the John Innes Centre next to the university of East Anglia and the Norfolk and Norwich University hospital, where work is continuing on a model gut. There is also some very pioneering work on nutrition and food science going on at the research park. Norwich is something of a centre of excellence globally in this sector and I am passionate about its potential to do good here in the UK, including in Norfolk, and across the world.

Why do I think that this technology has so much potential? The answer lies in a very important document, which I commend to all Members present if they have not already looked at it. It is the foresight report on food, written by the Government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir John Beddington, last year, and it was published—with the most beautiful timing—as we all arrived here in this new Parliament. It issues a clarion call to us all, including to this Parliament, about a global challenge. World population is set to rise to 9 billion during our lifetime, and in that time as a global society we have to produce twice as much food from half as much land with half the inputs, if we are to develop anything like a sustainable agricultural sector globally. I repeat—we have to produce twice as much food from half as much land with half as much pesticide, water and energy. That is a major challenge; it is one that Sir John and his committee have rightly received huge credit for addressing; and it is one that this Parliament needs to take very seriously.

Sir John in that report and many others since its publication have highlighted the importance of our using every tool at our disposal. I am not for a minute suggesting that GM is the magic bullet, or the only technology or even the most important technology to consider. However, as Sir John and his committee highlighted, it is one vital technology in the toolkit. And it seems to me that that global challenge of international development, of helping to lift people around the world out of poverty and of helping other countries around the world to go through a process of agricultural and industrial revolution—which took us nearly 200 years to go through—more quickly and more sustainably is a noble and important calling which we in Europe and the rest of the advanced western world, particularly here in Britain, should be drawn to.

We should be drawn to it not least because as we now find ourselves to be a small, wise, old, poor, public sector-dominated and debt-ridden economy that is looking for ways to drive growth around the world—not just growth for its own sake but growth that we can be proud of, that is fulfilling and that gives this country a sense of its self and its role in a world that is now dominated by bigger and faster-growing countries—it seems to me that drawing on our agricultural heritage and our science base in the life sciences, whether in medicine, food science or clean tech, and exporting that expertise and knowledge around the world to help the next generation of nations is something that we could all be proud of. It would be a part of a growth recovery that would have social benefits as well as economic benefits.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend share my view that this important debate is somewhat hampered by extremists who describe some of the practices to which he refers as a sort of “Frankenstein food”, generating fear and concern that freeze people into inaction when in fact we should be inspiring them into action?

[George Freeman]

I could not agree with my hon. Friend more. I mentioned my own experience in the biomedical sector, where I have come across that sort of extreme anti-science movement. I hope that in my moderate tones I have communicated the fact that I am not for one moment an extremist on either side. But I could not agree with my hon. Friend more.

Extremism is not helpful in the debate on this subject. In my medical experience, I have seen the extremism of the anti-animal experimentation groups. Nobody is in favour of animal experiments. However, there is an irony that I will share with everyone here today. I am setting up a company to develop predictive toxicology software, to reduce the need for animal experiments. In order to do that, one needs to consult with the people who know most about the animal experiments, to reduce the necessity of those experiments. In so doing, we triggered the attention of the animal extremists, who targeted the company. Of course, of the six people on the board, there was one female, who was the company secretary. Who do people think the extremists targeted? The lone female in her cottage at night. The cowardice—moral, intellectual and physical—of the extremists shocked me then and in this debate today I want to try to initiate an open debate and to invite a proper and open discussion of the issues. As I say, I could not agree more with my hon. Friend.