The recent public fright over genetically-modified (GM) food should have taught New Labour a lesson: we still have some way to go before achieving joined-up government. A related lesson is that we do not have a proper system for overseeing the unending stream of expert advice which governments now receive.
Robert May, the government's chief scientific adviser, said in a paper to MPs that the recent experience with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) explained why the British were more concerned about GM food than the Americans. But he added reassuringly: "Lessons have been learnt. We need to have much better lines of traceability from food production to the table. We should allow consumers maximum information and choice about what they buy through clear labelling." So far, so good. "And we must test," he said. "No one was looking out for untoward effects in cattle. In the case of GM food, we are testing for unexpected and unwanted effects."
not learning enough from bse
It is undeniable that the debate about GM food is being conducted in a far less secretive manner than the BSE fiasco. But Robert May is living proof that not all the lessons have been learnt. He is the scientific expert who sits on the cabinet's ministerial group on biotechnology and genetic modification (MISC6). At the time of writing (early March) there was no place on that committee for Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer. Yet one of the many blunders of the BSE crisis was the reluctance of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Maff) to ask the advice of the then chief medical officer, Donald Acheson, in the early stages of the crisis.
According to the definitive Whitehall report on BSE, written by a bright young Maff civil servant, David North, the chief veterinary officer Howard Rees first reported the BSE disorder to the ministry during the June 1987 general election. By the end of 1987, the human health implications of BSE were being raised by the media, and in February 1988, Alastair Cruickshank, head of Maff's Animal Health Group, said in an internal minute: "We do not know where this disease came from, we do not know how it is spread, and we do not know whether it can be passed to humans...."
But the Maff machine appeared to be preoccupied with farming and costs, rather than with people and their welfare. (The ministry is such a stain on Whitehall that, once the Food Standards Agency has been set up, it should be culled and handed over to the Department of Trade and Industry for rendering.)
Maff finally got around to writing to Donald Acheson in March 1988, to ask his advice on BSE. Acheson proposed the creation of a small group of experts to review the problem, adding that he "thought it highly likely that the advice would be that carcasses of affected animals should not go for human consumption."
The following June, the experts recommended the destruction of affected animals; on 8th August 1988 a slaughter and compensation Order came into effect. A ban on using Specified Bovine Offals (SBOs) for human consumption was introduced in November 1989. But the SBO ban was not effectively policed until 1995. For six years, contaminated meat products continued to pass into the human food chain.
When the official BSE inquiry reports later this year, the families of the victims of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (nvCJD), including those infected during the six-year leakage of SBOs, are going to take Maff to the cleaners for negligence. Those who doubt that negligence should consider Chapter Six of North's report: "Enforcement of the Government's SBO Controls, 1990-95." When the SBO controls were first debated in the Commons, in 1989, the House was assured that the SBO ban was the final stage in the policy of "removing any bovine offals that could possibly... harbour the BSE agent and preventing them from being used in any foodstuff."
In a further Commons debate, in July 1992, a Maff minister emphasised the importance of the precautionary principle; of ensuring that "those tissues of an animal which might harbour the agent... are removed from all animals." The SBO ban, he added, did just that.
But in July 1995, following a four-week surveillance of abattoirs and boning plants by the state veterinary service, the Maff permanent secretary, Richard Packer, wrote a minute describing the inadequate enforcement of the SBO controls as an "unfortunate state of affairs which has presumably existed for many years." He added: "We must expect questions on why we allowed this situation to persist for so long."
When parliament was informed of the suspected link between BSE and CJD, in March 1996, Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell said that the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC) had concluded "that the most likely explanation is that the cases are linked to exposure to BSE before the introduction of the Specified Bovine Offal ban in 1989." Maff said that routine checks of abattoirs and boning plants had been carried out by the state veterinary service between 1991 and 1995, and the inspections "did not suggest there were problems."
That was a lie. North, who is still a civil servant, now working for Jack Cunningham, had to be more circumspect in his report. But even he concluded: "This chapter identifies various pieces of evidence which suggest that the latter claim cannot confidently be sustained."
North's report points to a classic bureaucratic failure. It identifies a culture characterised by a reluctance to face facts; a delay in response; a lack of consideration for human health and welfare; belated realisation of the enormity of the blunders; followed by panic, concealment, cover-up and a shuffling-off of blame.
Against this background can we be confident about how the GM food issue is being handled? GM tomato paste was approved for consumption in September 1994; soya beans, in February 1995; and maize in 1996, with four further varieties approved in January and February 1997. (No permission has been given for the commercial growth of GM crops, but trials are taking place.)
In none of these approvals was the advice of the chief medical officer sought. Food Safety Minister Jeff Rooker has now instructed Maff officials that Liam Donaldson has to be consulted before any further GM foods are approved. But why did this not happen earlier in the light of the BSE experience? Presumably it conflicted with some aspect of Whitehall culture.
But it is a welcome sign of self-doubt in that culture that MISC6 has now commissioned a paper on GM food, which is being written, jointly, by May and Donaldson. It could make interesting reading, as they seem to have strikingly different views on some of these matters.
May went on BBC radio's Today programme in February to proclaim that there was no scientific justification for continuing the beef on the bone ban. "It's a mixture, in my view, of a political and scientific decision," he said. "On purely scientific grounds, I personally don't see much point in banning beef on the bone, but it has to be seen in the wider context."
Had May read the advice to ministers from Donaldson on this subject, dated 18th January? It said: "I recommend that there should be no reintroduction into the human food chain... of dorsal root ganglia, as well as bone-marrow... for the time being." Because BSE still infects an unknown number of cattle, he advised that to lift the beef on the bone ban "would mean that this pool of tissue from the small number of animals incubating BSE at the time of their slaughter could be eaten inadvertently during a meal, in meat trimmed off the bone or hidden in stocks, gravy and other products."
Donaldson had learned the basic lesson of the BSE scandal: that a precautionary policy is better than unnecessary risk. "To date," Donaldson wrote, "there have been 35 definite and probable cases of nvCJD. It is impossible to predict the number of cases which will eventually occur. At this time the estimates... range from under a hundred to several million." Donaldson is the government's chief medical officer. He says that there could be more than a million victims of nvCJD. Yet he has no place on MISC6. Meanwhile the man who takes the scientific lead on MISC6 says that the lessons have been learnt and that there is not much of a case for the beef bone ban.
Conflicting advice on GM food
So what is happening to May's claim that "we are testing for unwanted effects on human health" from GM foods? At least in one area that testing has suffered a setback. For much of last year, a sub-group of the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (ACNFP) worked on a proposal for cross-checking supermarket data on GM food-buyers with basic health data, "as a way of providing additional reassurance as to their long-term safety." Jeff Rooker wanted the kind of back-up protection used for new medicines, where doctors are asked to report any "unexpected or unwanted" side-effects or after-effects on patients. The safety net system would have been based on computerised cross-checks of supermarket sales data and separate health data.
Because the chains sell an estimated 70 per cent of all food eaten in the home, and because purchasing data is held by stores running loyalty cards, such as Tesco, Sainsbury's and Safeway, it is easy to cross-check health information with GM food purchases by postcode without needing to identify single households.
At a meeting in December, the ACNFP was told that the supermarkets had given an informal nod to the creation of such a system. The Daily Mail then ran a scare story in January, saying that people's shopping and eating habits were to be used in a huge Big Brother experiment on their health. None of the big food chains are now willing to cooperate.
As for the growth of GM crops in Britain, nothing has yet been permitted (unlike in the US, where they are common). Crops are being tested on farms, to see if there is any environmental impact from cross-pollination and any effect on wildlife.
Robert May, who was so sanguine about the risks from beef on the bone, appears much less so about GM crops. He says: "It is bad news for biological diversity in the countryside. Many GM crops will intensify and accelerate changes in the countryside... which trouble many of us, including me."
Other parts of the government advisory machine seem less worried. In January, the government's environmental advisors, the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE), considered two applications from Monsanto, for insect-protected and herbicide-tolerant cotton crops, which carried an antibiotic-resistant marker gene.
ACRE's advice to the government, on 8th February, said: "The evidence suggests the product notified by Monsanto is unlikely to pose a risk to human health and the environment in Britain [because the crops were to be grown in Spain]. The committee have no objection to the product being placed on the European Union market." However, it added: "The committee recognises that there are other views on this issue particularly if the antibiotics in question are gaining in clinical importance. The secretary of state may wish to take further advice."
Indeed, he did. Before the British vote was faxed to Brussels, further advice was received from the novel foods committee, ACNFP, leading Britain to vote against the applications, which did not receive qualified majority support. They will now go forward to a meeting of environment ministers, in April or May.
The ACNFP advice to ministers was difficult to get. Maff did not want to disgorge it. It is technical, but you do not need a science degree to understand the risks. The document is now on ACNFP's website (www.maff. gov.uk/food/acnfp), but a taste is enough to suggest that there is a gulf between the environmental safety advice given by ACRE and the food safety advice given by ACNFP.
"Monsanto, in correspondence and in a recent meeting with ACNFP experts, made a good case in support of their position that the occurrence of this [antibiotic-resistant] gene in the cottonseeds is not of significant risk. While the risk is small, it does, however, give rise to serious concerns... should human pathogens, in particular Neisseria gonorrhoea, acquire the gene, which confers resistance to streptomycin and spectinomycin.
"The company has concentrated on the probability of gene transfer occurring in the human gut. It is implied but never stated explicitly that the only concern is with the bowel flora, an important source of endogenous infection. Scant regard is taken of the oral flora or of environmental bacteria, which could act as potential gene reservoirs for other pathogens... It is accepted that the risk of such an event is small and cannot be quantified. The clinical consequences of such an evolutionary step would, however, be grave. It is therefore entirely appropriate in this instance to adopt a precautionary stance."
Robert May backed this conclusion, in his paper to MPs, saying that as a precaution against "the possibility of this gene escaping into the food chain as a result of the use of cotton [seed] as an animal feed, Britain voted against release and will continue to do so."
The advice dilemma
It would be disturbing if all scientific advice about a new phenomenon such as GM crops was identical. And the experts of ACRE and ACNFP are, in any case, checking for different things. But where does this leave the politicians? They are faced by experts with different views, who are subject to different lobbying interests, and who may have diverging approaches to risk. Torn between conflicting advice from May and Donaldson, or between ACRE and ACNFP, what do ministers do?
Expert advice is becoming more and more important to government. But the BSE and the GM food cases show that the advisory system in Britain is not working as well as it should. In the case of BSE, failings in Whitehall culture meant that not all the right experts were consulted. The GM food case, on the other hand, shows that when all the right experts are consulted, they may tell conflicting stories.
Even if the current review of the regulatory framework for biotechnology does establish a better system, one big lesson will remain. The lesson is that we need strong ministers who will stand up to the experts and impose their own judgements. It is the job of the experts to explain the choices and inform ministerial judgement. But it is the job of the politicians to choose.
