There is no doubt that the Government's official public debate on GM crops, involving 650 meetings and responses from 37,000 people, had considerable flaws and was seriously under-resourced, as the study below says.

The blame for this can be squarely laid at the door of the Government - ultimately, this was about making a gesture towards public involvement that the Government had no intention of allowing to guide its decision making.

When Mrs Beckett announced the 'public debate' on whether to commercialise GM crops, a senior official in her own department admitted the real intention was that the 'debate' and its surrounding economic and science strands would serve as a PR vehicle for dispelling 'the myths that GM crops damage health and the environment'. A government minister also privately acknowledged that the decision to grow the crops had already been taken!

The report, however, fails to clarify the source of the problems with the debate, but rather attacks its unwelcome finding of overwhelming opposition to GM crops. The report claims that the opposition to GM crops was over-represented in the report. Its basis for doing so appears largely to be an opinion poll it commissioned! Yet there is plenty of other opinion poll evidence that tallies well with the official public debate findings.

The involvement in this research of the GM-friendly, BBSRC-funded Institute of Food Research (IFR) - a sister organisation on the Norwich Research Park of the pro-biotech John Innes Centre - also has to be a serious cause of concern with regard to the claims in this report. Those claims will, of course, be music to the ears of the Government and the biotech industry.

As Karly Graham says in the article below, "I don't think the public's worry about GM can be overestimated. British people have already voted with their feet by refusing to buy GM products and supermarkets have taken the commercial decision not to stock food made with it – I don't think they would do that if people were happy to buy it."

For more on the IFR, JIC and BBSRC, see The Biotech brigade directory at www.gmwatch.org

1.Debates on GM are criticised
2.GM Crops Opposition May Have Been 'Over-Estimated'
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1.Debates on GM are criticised
EDP, 19 February 2004
TARA GREAVES

Last summer's government-sponsored debates on GM crops are criticised today in a new report by Norfolk researchers, which also claims public fears have been overestimated.

The GM Nation? debates – several of which took place in East Anglia – are said to have been under-resourced in terms of money, time and expertise.

A team of independent academic researchers, including a group from the University of East Anglia in Norwich and the Institute of Food Research at Colney, is behind the new report.

It comes as the Government moves towards a decision about whether genetically modified crops should be grown commercially in Britain.

But while anti-GM campaigners in Norfolk agree the debates failed to engage the public, they strongly dispute other findings.Karly Graham, who organised a public meeting at Lyng, near Dereham, after finding out a trial of GM maize had been planted nearby, told the EDP: Nicole Cook, who organised a well-attended debate in Diss, added: "I've never found a great deal of support above and beyond that of some of those in the farming world or scientists."

Prof Nick Pidgeon, from the UEA, said: "The results of our survey broadly mirror a number of the key conclusions of the debate steering board, particularly regarding the widespread levels of concern across Britain about the risks of this technology and the need for independent regulation of the technology.

"However, our results also show that the extent of outright opposition to GM food and crops among the British population is probably lower than indicated in many of the GM Nation? findings."

The evaluation team found 36pc opposition to GM, 13pc in support and 39pc undecided.
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2.GM Crops Opposition May Have Been 'Over-Estimated'
By Gavin Cordon, Whitehall Editor, PA News
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2548778

The Government’s consultation exercise on genetically-modified (GM) crops may have seriously over-estimated the scale of public opposition, according to an independent report published today.

The official report on the GM Nation exercise, conducted last summer, concluded that more than four out of five people were against GM crops and that just 2% would be prepared to eat GM foods.

But a team of academics from Cardiff University, the University of East Anglia and the Institute of Food Research, said the project had been and “flawed in a number of important respects”.

It said that its own findings suggested that many people had yet to make up their minds about GM crops.

A Mori poll for the UEA found that while 36% opposed GM food, 13% supported it and 39% were neither for or against.

Although 85% agreed that not enough was known about the long-term effects on health of GM food, 45% thought GM crops could hold future benefits for consumers and 56% thought they could help developing nations.

“The results of our survey provide important complementary evidence suggesting that current UK ‘public opinion’ is not a unitary whole, but fragmented with considerable ambivalence co-existing alongside outright opposition,” the report said.

The report also said that the GM Nation exercise – which involved public meetings around the country – may have been damaged by the Government’s own actions.

“We note that, whilst a difficult matter to judge, many actions and statements by Government around the time of the debate had the potential to undermine the credibility of the debate process,” it said.

“This effect may go some way towards explaining widespread cynicism among both participants and the wider public about the likely impact of the debate on Government policy.”

While the report praised the “innovative” nature of the project, it said that most of the aims and objectives had been “conceptually unclear” or difficult to measure “in any sensible manner”.

“In our view the production of the final report was over-hasty and under-resourced, and featured a methodologically worrying analysis of the debate’s findings,” it said.

The director of the research consortium which produced the report, Professor Nick Pidgeon, said that despite the problems with GM Nation project, their own findings broadly mirrored a number of its key conclusions – particularly on the need for independent regulation.

He added: “However, our results also show that the extent of outright opposition to GM food and crops amongst the British population is probably lower than indicated in many of the GM Nation findings”.

Mori interviewed 1,363 people aged 15 and over between July 19 and September 12 last year.

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"Why is the Government going ahead? It is not because of the science, it is because of the Bush administration applying pressure, and because of companies like Monsanto who want to make a big profit bonanza out of cornering the world food supply. It is nothing to do with feeding the world." - Michael Meacher

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