§ Mr. Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South)I doubt whether anything that I shall say in this debate will come as a surprise to the Minister, who has been assiduous in dealing with the welter of parliamentary questions that I have tabled on genetically modified foods and their implications for human and environmental health. I am pretty certain that he will already have read the Bill in my name—the Genetically Modified Food and Producer Liability Bill; I am equally certain that he will have seen the "Soapbox" documentary platform that I had on this subject; and I am fairly certain that he will have heard the "Farming Today" interview that I did this morning. He may at that time already have been out feeding his civil servants. I offer those introductory comments as a tribute to the Minister's assiduous commitment to public standards and food safety.
I want to use this opportunity to give equal praise to the national campaign that Friends of the Earth is launching today on the safety of food, specifically GM food. The campaign seeks to set up a platform that establishes society's basic rights and responsibilities, which, sadly, we do not fully have but which are entirely consistent with the values with which the Labour party came to office. When we came into government, we said clearly that the society that we wanted to take part in shaping had to strike a balance between rights and responsibilities.
I believe that the campaign needs to address three rights and two responsibilities. The rights are fairly simple: the right to know, the right to say no, and the right to grow safe food. Those rights must be balanced by the responsibility to protect the environment in which we live and the responsibility to put right the damage done to that environment.
On the right to say no, European Environment Ministers have recently been involved in discussing the framework of constraints that should exist on releasing GM organisms into the environment. I welcome the fact that they have tightened the rules within the past week, although I would have preferred it had they gone a couple of steps further and recognised the strength of the case for a moratorium on GM crop growing. There is still time for a decision to be reached on that.
One of the arguments used was that we may not be able to go as far as a moratorium because it could be illegal; that it would somehow interfere with international trade agreements. As such, it would require us to abandon one of the most important principles that has guided us through the ages: the right of countries, both nationally and internationally, to lay claim to the precautionary principle. That applies to medicines, drugs and all types of new products. It means that if we are uncertain about the risk to human or environmental health, we have the democratic right to say no and to define a pause within which to reflect on the risks involved. It cannot be right that trade treaties override the obligations to put public safety first that democratically elected Governments have to the citizens who elect them.
The second right, which follows, is the right to know. A huge amount of the debate on GM foods has focused on how much—or how little—we know about the foods that we already consume. It is extremely important that 313 we go further down that path. It allows the public to exercise an informed choice and does not allow the food chain to be polluted, as it has been, by GM foods being secreted into it without allowing the public to make an informed choice.
§ Mr.David Tredinnick (Boswort)The hon. Gentleman and I have discussed this matter before. As he knows, the Statutory Instruments Joint Committee, which I chair, recently reported to Parliament on the Food Labelling (Amendment) Regulations 1999. The Committee was concerned that the regulations did not require suppliers to state clearly on a product that it contained GM organisms. There was thus a danger of consumers buying GM foods without realising it. The Minister wrote to me, as Chairman, asking the Committee to look at the matter again. I am not sure that the Committee can "unreport" what it has reported, but it will look carefully at the matter.
Despite assurances that the Ministry had consulted widely, I am mindful of what Friends of the Earth—
§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin)Order. I must interrupt the hon. Gentleman.
§ Mr. SimpsonI thank the hon. Member for Bosworth (Mr. Tredinnick) for raising the issue of labelling. I know that the Minister takes it seriously because I have raised it with him as well. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will deal with it in his own speech.
I should like to direct my comments about the right to know in a slightly different direction. One of the great frauds that have been perpetrated by the biotechnology industry on our democratic process is that we have been persuaded to accept a complete contradiction. We are told that genetic modification is revolutionary technology, yet that GM crops are no different from traditional crops—that we can deal with GM products as though they are equivalents. That is the term that has been used to push revolutionary products as though they were simply novelties.
We need to step back and reflect on the case to be made for moving the scrutiny process for GM crops from the food Acts to the medicines Acts. I have a fairly simple example for the House. It is now possible to produce a potato with its own insecticide factory chugging away inside it as it grows, thus avoiding the need for extensive spraying of pesticides. However, if someone were to go into a garden centre and buy pesticides off the shelf, cautionary warnings about the health risks from those pesticides would be spelled out in large letters. A potato with the same pesticides inside has no health warning attached.
There has been no scrutiny process that has allowed us to study not only the long-term implications for human health, but the short and long-term implications for the eco-systems within which these crops are grown. We need to establish new benchmarks against which scientific scrutiny can be measured if we are to have any confidence in the industry's claims.
The third right is the right to grow safe food. It is important to stress that this is not an anti-agriculture argument. Indeed, it is an argument in favour of 314 agricultural rights. It is in favour of traditional agricultural processes and the protection of farmers' rights against the processes that are unfolding globally in terms of corporate exploitation of the land and the growers of food.
Last September, David Chaney, a farmer in Kentucky, pleaded guilty to a crime and was fined $35,000. He had pleaded guilty to the heinous crime of saving and replanting seeds—in this case, soya beans. He had to pay that fine to Monsanto because the soya beans had been supplied by Monsanto under new product licences, driven by patent protection, whereby there is an everlasting obligation to pay to the biotech companies royalties on their seeds. That seems perverse.
Suddenly, the whole history of human agriculture is on trial. To prosecute farmers for saving and replanting seeds is like prosecuting birds for flying, people for breathing or fish for swimming. It is the basis on which agriculture depends. Farmers have historic rights to save seeds—rights on which societies have always depended. We need to set down benchmarks that protect farmers' rights to save and propagate their own seeds.
I am pleased that in November last year a different farmer, Percy Schmeiser of Saskatoon, Canada, decided not to plead guilty because he had not bought any Monsanto seeds. They had simply turned up growing on his land. Monsanto prosecuted him, but he has put up a resolute defence, saying that if the seeds got on to his land, Monsanto should prosecute the wind and the bees—or perhaps he should have the right to prosecute Monsanto for an act of pollution and intrusion. The polluter should be prosecuted, not the farmer who ends up with the responsibility of clearing up the pollution.
In a press release on 29 September last year Monsanto, far from being apologetic, celebrated the fact that it had 475 such prosecutions across 22 states, with another 250 in the pipeline. They were all against farmers who had saved seeds. That nailed the lie that GM foods are about feeding the world. They are about biotech corporations seeking to take ownership of the global food chain. We need to protect farmers and the public against such monopolisation and takeover.
§ Mr. Norman Baker (Lewes)The hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Simpson) has done a public service by securing the debate and saying what he has said. I wholeheartedly agree with him. Does he agree that, given the piranha-like behaviour of the biotechnology companies, it is important that liability issues should be clearly established so that we know what rights farmers and consumers have? If something goes wrong with the environment and there is pollution of a farmer's fields or further on in the food chain—let us hope that there is not—it should be clear who is liable. It will not be the farmer or the consumer, but those who are seeking to introduce alien technology to our countryside.
§ Mr. SimpsonThat is absolutely right. I congratulate the hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Baker) on the work that he has done on pushing that point forward. We must take the principle that the polluter pays much more seriously. I hope that recent changes in the framework agreed for the European Union may move the debate on beyond producer liability for processed food to liability for primary agricultural produce.
There must be a framework of clear, corporate liabilities for making good the damage that is done. That is one of the cornerstones of the Friends of the Earth's 315 campaign that is being launched today—but before I touch on that, I should like to take the House back a couple of steps.
I am always confident that the Minister will have researched the background to the issues rigorously. However, he may not know that my starting point on the issue probably dates back to my mother. I remember being taken around the supermarkets as a child. I was a willing helper, loading my mother's shopping trolley. That worked well until I was stopped from putting something into the trolley. My mother refused to allow a tin of Argentinean corned beef to cross the front line of her shopping trolley because there was a huge food scare at the time about the safety of Argentinean corned beef.
My mother was an urban warrior, defending her right to feed her children safe food. I suspect that her inclinations are identical to those of most parents today, who make the same presumptions. They will not allow food that they believe may damage their children's health into their shopping trolley. Today's campaign may not be led by my mother, but it is led by the massed ranks of the Women's Institute, by Prince Charles and by the collectivity of environmental organisations around the country. They are telling the major retailers that we intend to hold their boards of directors corporately and personally liable for every aspect of environmental damage or damage to human health that follows from the introduction of GM crops into the environment. That responsibility needs to be locked into the centre of the debate taking place in this country, which also needs to take place in the House.
We have to see where the front line of democracy is being redefined. At times, the democratic debate is led from the House; on this issue, it has been led from outside. In many ways, the defence of democracy has moved from the Bar of the House to the barcode of the supermarket checkout, where the massed ranks of the public will be actively engaged in a process of not consuming food that they believe to be unsafe. I hope that we can persuade the environmental movement to go a step further. As well as defining the liabilities and responsibilities of producers, we could get them to introduce a different form of loyalty card. Every supermarket chain in the land seems to have its own loyalty or reward card. I should like to see the launch of a "loyalty to the land" card that people can hand in at the checkout, notifying the store that the bearer does not wish to purchase any goods with GM ingredients. The right to reject is also the right to choose safely and confidently.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will also want to associate himself with a non-negotiable commitment to a safe environment, a more rigorous scrutiny process and the right to put loyalty to the land and loyalty to the public before the right of corporations to exploit the food chain and to enslave farming communities.
§ The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Jeff Rooker)I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Simpson) on securing the debate. Without devaluing his other comments, I want to concentrate on the central issue of product liability. I congratulate him on his recent private Member's Bill, the Genetically Modified Food and Producer Liability Bill. We often hear too many speeches 316 of complaint in the House and not enough follow-up action with parliamentarians using this place as a tool to achieve action. This is a working environment. The honour of being a Member of Parliament is a tool to be used. I do not expect that his Bill will make much progress in this Session, but that is not the intention. The Bill is a vehicle that can be ridden through many Sessions.
I cannot comment in detail on the difficulties of the farmers that my hon. Friend mentioned. I saw interviews with some of those farmers on television recently. The situation is not as clear cut as some people might think. It is not the norm for farmers to be able to save any old seed. There are very tight rules and controls governing the use of many seeds under the direction of the consent holders. Those who have researched the technology have intellectual property rights and are entitled to a return. Genetically modified foods are not in a separate category. That applies to many hybrid seeds that farmers want to use and which they have to purchase separately.
The other night, at a meeting in this place, I heard about the way in which seeds have been developed by a technique that I believe is known as mutogenesis. That horrified me far more than anything that I have heard about genetically modified seeds. If the public knew what had happened to seed development over the past 30 years there would be far more debate in this place, because that has happened in an unplanned way, with seeds being bombarded with radiation in the hope of something being developed that might be useful as a crop. We know far more about GM crops and foods than we know about their non-genetically modified equivalents. It is amazing, but most of the foods that we eat have not been subject to toxological examination as GM foods have been.
In response to what my hon. Friend said about potatoes that contain their own pesticides—we may call them biocides—I must make it clear that those potatoes are neither on sale here nor being grown commercially. Yes, technology is being used, and a vehicle may be developed to give us crops that contain their own armoury against the bugs that would otherwise eat them before we human beings get the chance to eat them.
The way in which those products are regulated is crucial because they are both a food and a pesticide at the same time. We must be very careful about how they are put on to the market. Part of our weaponry is to ensure that food is safe and does not contain products harmful to human beings. We examine thousands of products a year, looking for hundreds of different pesticides that may remain in them although they should not be there.
Early tomorrow, we shall publish a survey of pesticide residues in pears, which for the first time will specify brand names. A certain pesticide that is not allowed to be used in this country has been found in large but not harmful quantities in imported produce from Holland and Belgium. We shall give the details of where those products were purchased, both by supermarket and by country. We are policing the system all the time, and that is crucial.
As my hon. Friend said, we must bear in mind the right to know. There have been substantial changes in policy over the past two years, and we now publish veterinary medicine residue surveys, pesticide surveys and chemical contaminant surveys, with products identified by brand name. That puts a much greater onus on the importer and the producer to ensure that they know that their food is absolutely safe, and as clean and pure as can be.
317 My hon. Friend talked about product liability. He will know that on 3 February, in reply to an intervention on a debate on the same subject, I said to him:
Civil liability for damage caused by genetically modified organisms is covered by common law developed in the courts. On the basis of common law principles, the firm holding the marketing consent for the GMO crop can be held liable in law for any damages arising from ill effects attributed to that crop. As I have made it clear in a scrutiny Committee upstairs, the Government support the proposal in the European Commission Green Paper on food law to extend product liability to primary agricultural producers."—[Official Report, 3 February 1999; Vol. 324, c. 864.]Producers and importers of most products have indeed long been liable for any damage caused to consumers by defects in their products, but, under the EC directive on product liability, that is applied only to processed foods, not to primary agricultural products and game.That has changed since I spoke on 3 February. The recent extension of the scope of the directive means that it now covers the whole food chain. The United Kingdom Government fully supported the move, and the Department of Trade and Industry is taking the lead in implementing the extension. As a result, consumers will be able to sue for damages caused by fresh or processed food without having to prove producer negligence—a small but important step in improving compensation rights for consumers. Those EU rules were adopted on 10 May, and will have to apply throughout the EU by 4 December next year.
I recently gave evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee when it was producing its report on GMOs and the environment, which also considered the issue of liability for environmental damage. Its report notes that, in the United Kingdom, liability for environmental damage is currently governed by the normal rules of tort law.
The issue of liability was considered by the Council of Ministers in Luxembourg last week as part of the debate on the revision of the directive on releases of GMOs. The UK issued a minutes statement calling on the European Commission as a matter of priority to consider, outside the framework of directive 90/220, the feasibility of, and the possible criteria for, a liability regime or regimes to cover the release and marketing of GMOs. In relation to liability for producers and those who own and control the technology, we are therefore tightening up at every possible opportunity throughout the food supply chain.
Two of the other issues are consumer choice and labelling. We are determined to secure consumer choice, which can and has to be achieved in two ways. The first is effective labelling, and the second is ensuring that there are alternatives. That is why we took the initiative a year ago in publishing on our website the details of 60 suppliers of non-GM soya that could be accessed by British food producers.
Within a month of coming to office, we also changed the policy on specifying ingredients on labels, which the previous Government had declined to do. Indeed, they said that there was no need for separate labelling because such foods were neither technically nor nutritionally different.
We introduced the regulations for packaged foods from 19 March. Labels must now conform to them, and it is a prosecutable offence if they do not. We gave the catering 318 industry a six month lead-in, until 19 September, for non-packaged foods. That is the issue that the hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Baker) raised, and wrote to me about, confusing the issue completely in the process.
On Friday, we shall publish the guidance notes on the regulations. I agree that they come three months down the line, but everyone knew what the plan was. They will now be published and distributed to 500,000 food establishments, so that there can be no doubt about what the rules are.
Propaganda against GM foods is often illustrated by a picture of a tomato, or we might see someone dressed up 6 as a tomato. That is nice and convenient—tomatoes are lovable products—but I must tell the public that there are no GM tomatoes on sale or imported into this country.
§ Mr. RookerNo, it is impossible to give way.
There are only three products that have been regulated and are on sale in this country. The first, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South knows, is GM tomato paste based on a variety of tomatoes developed by Zeneca in his own constituency, at Nottingham university. The tomatoes are grown in p California and the tomato paste is imported. The other two products are maize and soya, which are also imported. There are no fresh tomatoes. However, because of misleading publicity, there has been a big drop in the sale of English tomatoes. People think that they are genetically modified, but they are not.
When the propagandists are at work, the points have to be balanced and we have to put the argument across as fairly as possible. We must avoid using misleading propaganda to make our case. There is plenty of evidence on both sides of the argument, for those who want to debate it rationally, and using misleading images to make a point is not the best way.
§ Mr. RookerI am sorry, but it is impossible to give way now.
There have been several debates in the House on the subject, and there will be more. There have been more Select Committee inquiries, and other inquiries, published on the subject in recent months than on any other subject that I can recall. Nobody has come up with a shred of evidence, medical or scientific, that there is any problem with the safety of GM foods compared with the non-GM alternative. It is not as if we have not looked for such evidence; we have.
We have taken stronger powers, which were published on 21 May, to increase and open up the regulatory process. The new advisory commission on agriculture and the environment, whose members are currently being advertised for, will, I imagine, want to take on board one of the issues connected with the potatoes as early as possible. It will be an overarching body, and consumers will be represented on it, so I expect that it will press the regulatory committee and the scientific committees on whether GM foods should be regulated as pesticides, as a food, or both. The rules are different in each case.
We have taken positive action on a series of issues, and we will not stop there. The setting up of the Food Standards Agency is another way of dealing with food 319 safety. The advertisements for the board and commission have appeared this week, and the Food Standards Bill is now passing through the House.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on making good use of the Floor of the House, and the procedures of the House, to advance his case. In general, we do not disagree with the points that he makes, especially those affecting the safety of food and the information available to consumers.