Helen Wallace, director of genetics campaign group GeneWatch UK, resigned from the Food Standards Agency’s Steering Committee on GM on the grounds that the consultation process the FSA planned was “nothing more than a PR exercise on behalf of the GM industry”. In this month’s Just the Answer, she tells just-food why she resigned and what she feels is wrong about how the FSA is approaching GM.
just-food: In your resignation letter, you say that the FSA consultation process on GM is free “reputation management” for the GM industry at the taxpayer’s expense. A serious accusation. Can you expand on why you felt you had to resign from the FSA’s steering committee?
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Helen Wallace: Our concern is about the way the dialogue [consultation] was set up. It began with background documents that claimed it was inevitable retailers would have to change their policy on GM within 12 months because there was going to be a shortage of non-GM soya, which is an industry position. Secondly the industry suggested in its emails to the FSA that the discussion should be framed by claims that we are going to need GM crops to feed the world in the future rather than by what is happening now.
We know that the industry is engaged in a major PR exercise telling people that there are going to be a whole new generation of GM crops whilst at the same time lobbying for weaker regulation on existing herbicide-tolerant crops for animal feed. The dialogue was basically following exactly the same lines.
j-f: Professor Brian Wynne, who also resigned from the Steering Committee, appeared to have done so purely over how the dialogue was being approached. You have taken issue with the process but to what degree have your views on GM itself influenced your decision?
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Wallace: We [GeneWatch UK] have never taken an absolutist position against GM but we have been very much on the critical side of the debate. Our concerns about GM are very closely linked with the powers of corporations and the control of the food chain, and I felt those issues were being excluded from the dialogue.
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By GlobalDataj-f: You were brought into the Steering Committee as a sceptical voice to represent the campaigner view. Is it not a shame that campaigners have lost that voice because of your resignation?
Wallace: In an informal sense, I would have been the person who would be trying to represent the views of NGOs and the critical side of the debate. My resignation obviously was partly because I felt I couldn’t adequately do that in the context in which the dialogue was set up.
If they’re going to have a dialogue it has to include all the relevant voices. They have lost a big sector of people’s views on this issue. And that shows there is something seriously wrong with the way they have gone about things.
j-f: According to Professor Jonathan Jones of the John Innes Centre, the FSA sought input from all stakeholders regarding how to deal with the fact that “80% of our animal feed is imported and most of the soy and maize on world markets is GM”. Do you refute the suggestion that there will be a shortage of non-GM feed?
Wallace: The production of GM in other parts of the world has not been increasing. It’s about production of soya in North and South America. There are other areas of the world that have non-GM. There is also very clearly no shortage of non-GM feed that can be imported from Brazil.
j-f: What is your response to the view expressed in the Royal Society report, Reaping the Benefits, that GM has to be considered as part of the solution to the issue of global food security?
Wallace: NGOs argued very strongly that the IAASTD [the International Assessment of Science and Technology for International Development] report had much greater legitimacy. And that report concluded that GM did not have a major role to play and that the emphasis should be on agro-ecological methods for improving security of food supplies and that more research should go into those areas. Also the press coverage of the Royal Society report went further than the report and very much interpreted it as a very strongly pro-GM position whereas the report actually does contain rather more caveats.
j-f: You have made considerable mention of the GBP500,000 cost of the dialogue. Is it possible that given the controversy over the dialogue and the fact that the Government is seeking to save money ministers will now decide to scrap it?
Wallace: I think that is definitely a possibility. GeneWatch has always been very much in favour of involving the public and having these kinds of dialogues but there really is no point in going ahead with a dialogue that doesn’t have the support from all sides in the debate and is not seen to be an open and fair process. So I think it would be a waste of money for it to continue to be run by the FSA in the form proposed.
j-f: Is it not ironic that a public interest campaign group may have contributed to a public dialogue being scrapped?
Wallace: It is not ironic because what we want is the public to have a say about questions such as whether unauthorised GM crops should be allowed to enter Europe in feed shipments. Now if the dialogue is starting from a position that that is inevitable, then that dialogue is a counter-productive process and not the type of process we’d like to see.
j-f: Do you believe the notion that the public is ‘anti-science’ and anti-GM sentiment can therefore be whipped up by the media has influenced how this issue has been approached?
Wallace: There is no evidence that the public is anti-science. All the research that’s been done on public views indicates that people are concerned about the role of corporations, about whether they are still going to be able to choose to eat non-GM foods, whether regulation really works. So the problem with Lord Rooker’s [FSA chair] position is that he’s fallen for the pro-GM PR which is telling people that the reason the public don’t like GM is because they are anti-science or irrational. There is no evidence that that is really the case. I think it’s a very patronising view and it’s not supported by the research.
j-f: On occasions the FSA’s actions have been applauded by campaigners but latterly NGOs have suggested it is too close to industry. What is your view?
Wallace: It is very worrying from the point of view of the FSA overall that it is now widely seen as representing the views of the industry much more than the views of the consumer. It’s very clear that those who have concerns about GM feel that the FSA have been very pro-GM in the positions that they’ve taken.
j-f: Given that the FSA was created under the last administration and we now have a new government keen to cut costs and possibly eyeing reform or even scrapping the FSA, should campaigners be careful what they wish for when criticising the organisation?
Wallace: Yes I think that is also true. Any changes could go either way in terms of increasing or decreasing public confidence.
