 I'm Johanna Nesseth. I'm Senior Vice President here, and I head up our work on food security. I'm glad to have Mark Linus with us today. He's come over from the UK for some business and activities, and we're really pleased to be able to have a public discussion with him on biotechnology. I'm going to give one quick advertisement before we start. That is, this will probably be our last event on food security here at 1800 K Street. We've been living here for a couple of decades, and we're moving in September to 1616 Rhode Island Avenue. I have much swankier digs there, so you won't have to sit in the basement for all of our discussion. So we'll look forward to seeing you there. I'm going to give a little bit of context before we jump into our conversation. Mark is well known by now, I think, for talking about biotechnology and GMOs in very different ways. He started out as a very active opponent of biotechnology and GMOs, and famously in January, gave a talk and said, look, I've kind of changed my mind. I've looked at the science of this issue, and I think that we need to rethink the way we're talking about biotech, especially from an environmental standpoint, but also from a humanitarian standpoint. We're pleased to have him here today because we've been doing work on food security for a number of years, and one of the areas we've been quite focused on is ag technology. Over the past year, we've had a project underway looking at the potential for genetics and biotechnology to promote food security, especially among smallholder farmers. We've done field work in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. We've looked at the science communities, the public research sector, the NGO and anti-GM activists, as well as sort of the communication structure around this technology to see what does the regulatory structure look like, what does the communication structure look like, what is the real potential to actually improve food security with this technology. So we'll have a report coming out in October, and it's great to have a discussion today to talk about GM and biotechnology, but also really highlight its relevance for food security. So welcome, Mark. Thank you for being with us. I want to just start out and get some background. I'd like to ask if you can kind of talk us through the path that you've taken, but what I'm really curious for you to talk about first is what was the genesis of opposition to biotechnology and GM technology? I think if you can talk to us about what was happening, this technology was what the first crop or variety was introduced in what, 1996. It's not that old. It hit at a time when there was a lot of movement, a lot of activity and really caught a spark of opposition, and you were at the heart of that. I'd like you to talk a little bit about what was the environment then and then how have things changed and progressed? How has your thinking changed? And maybe just take us through that path. Right. Well, if I think back to, I think it was about 1995-96, and there were several elements of how this debate unfolded, which became almost like a perfect storm. And probably the first and the central aspect of this is that genetic modification appeared to be and was doing something very new and something where potentially humans were taking a technological step which shouldn't be taken, was somehow violating the species boundary, the order of nature itself by transferring DNA between entirely unrelated organisms which couldn't breed naturally. And the archetype, of course, was the fish gene in the strawberry or whatever it was. And you just think of the imagery that that gives you immediately at a very visceral emotional level of outrage and disgust and so on and so forth. And it doesn't take much to do a picture of a fish and a strawberry all joined together to think that something pretty awful is happening there. And I actually think that was the main thing which really caught the public mind, was the way that that was presented and the way that that then gives you really a visceral response. And, of course, this feeds into a very deep-seated concern that we have in the modern world about how technology has driven too far. You can see this with the opposition to nuclear power and the Franken stuff, the Franken food, Franken fish, Franken trees. That's a very clear association, of course, with the whole Frankenstein story where this monster is created out of stitched-together body parts and is somehow imbued with this evil characteristic of the mad scientist having way too much power and therefore being punished for the hubris. And this goes back even further. It goes back to the Bible. It goes back to the Tree of Knowledge, to the Tower of Babel. Every creation myth in the world has this element to it of somehow humans becoming too powerful. It's one of our original angst. So I think this is a very, very deep-seated issue for a lot of people and that resonance is really central to the opposition, combined with the concern about corporations and about food supply and the concentration of corporate power within the food supply. Now, that's not all wrong. There are real issues there, I think. And so that then became a major motivating factor for the left and for the environmental movement, generally. And all of these things combined with, certainly in Europe, with this American corporation, Monsanto, coming in and very arrogantly forcing this food into our food supply, forcing it down athroats. Again, you can think of the imagery that was employed there. And it seemed also to be very tied up with the model of farming and agricultural production, which we were very much against. Again, for some good reasons, that this was chemical-dependent monoculture, the whole package of first-generation herbicide-tolerant crops where you would, obviously, part of this is a misunderstanding. People, it's not as if everything was originally organic and then Monsanto comes in and suddenly it's all drenched with glyphosate. Of course, herbicides were already being used and there were already a lot of environmental concerns about the way that it was done. But this seems to be a further extension of chemical-type monoculture. So all of these elements combined to something which pushed all of the buttons of the environmental movement but also made a very broad coalition. So we had Prince Charles, we had the natural law party, we had the deep leftist greens and sort of combined with the kind of the anxious foodie middle class to make this a very, very powerful thing which has not gone away. In fact, if anything, it's intensified over the last 10 or 15 years despite being fundamentally based on several misunderstandings and misconceptions and also flying in the face of what the mainstream scientific community would tell you. Can you talk a little bit about some of the key assumptions or beliefs that you have looked through and decided you don't believe in or you don't agree with? Well, it's been quite an epiphany to even get to grips with the basics of molecular biology. So I think I probably really did believe that there was such a thing as fishy DNA and strawberry DNA, right? And I think most people would tell you the same. I think most people don't want, you know, you ask someone on the street corner whether they want jeans in their pizza and they'll say, no, thank you very much. I don't want DNA in my food, that's a disgusting idea. So actually, I was profoundly ignorant about this. I'm not, you know, I don't have a PhD now. I'm not saying I'm the best informed person in the world, but this has been a very long learning process for me. And again, this came to me through trying to become a better science communicator myself. I was writing books primarily on climate change. I've written two or three books, one of which won the Royal Society Prize for Science Books. And so I was very enmeshed in the scientific community and in defending the scientific community from attacks from primarily from the political right, saying that climate change didn't exist, so on and so forth, all of these kinds of associated conspiracy theories. And I would always say, look, you've got to focus on peer-reviewed science. You've got to listen to the scientific consensus on this issue. And at the same time, I was writing profoundly unscientific or even anti-scientific screeds about GMOs. And of course, that was an inconsistent position to hold, yet it's one that the environmental movement largely still holds today. And that inconsistency for me, I felt I could really only resolve it by being kind of pro-science without being overly simplistic, but to try and have a position which respected the clear scientific consensus on all of the different areas. It's a really important set of conversations around how do you communicate science. And I think in our research, we've looked at the fact that we need to bring more science to the passion and more passion to the science, because on the scientific side, you get fairly dry communications of, we've tried this, we've tested it, it works. It's fine. You don't understand. And on the anti-GM side, you hear, but it's just not natural. I don't like it. It doesn't feel right. And you get these attempts kind of in the middle of people saying, well, I don't understand. People take medicine. That is biotechnology. Why is it a leap to eat biotech food? And I always think in reaction to that comment, well, it's different. You expect medicine to alter something in your person. You expect food to be nourishment and part of your family activity and part of a very personal part of your life. It is very, very different. And I think that there has been a real challenge in bringing together a level of conversation and communication that addresses key scientific questions, but also recognizes some of the cultural impacts of food. And if you look at some of the opposition to biotech, you've got the environmental opposition. And I think the people who have come to talk more about biotech and GM technology as part of a solution going forward tend to be environmental folks who say, look, this is important for managing a lower footprint for agriculture, for managing water flows, for using less pesticide. But then you've also got the health folks. I think that discussion about health and human health effects has really not taken off very well. I'd like to have you just talk a little bit about science communication. And you said something earlier today. Scientists have started in the UK to communicate from a public science standpoint. They're not speaking on behalf of industry. They're just saying, we're scientists. We're doing research. We see some public good to be done here. Can you talk more about science communication and where you see some potential productive discussions? Anyone who has any relationship with industry whatsoever, financial or professional, is compromised in terms of how they can present themselves in this debate. And that's just a fact of life and you have to deal with it. So the only people who can be seen to communicate honestly about this are the scientists who work in the public sector. And luckily, given the need to change the debate here in a more rational direction, there are many public sector scientists who are doing a lot of fascinating work. And one of the original ways I got into this was working with a scientist at Rothamsted Research in the UK who are developing a GMO wheat, which is designed to be resistant to aphids. Now, aphids are not just an important insect pest, but they're also a vector for viruses. And so there's a lot of agrochemical use being used, obviously, to deal with that at the moment. So the situations we have it now is that if we were able to deploy this, then we will be able to reduce the use of chemical pesticides. They also sidestep some of the key arguments by saying this wasn't going to be patented. Sorry, since we're in the US. And therefore, it wasn't going to be another part of the corporate monopolization and so on and so forth. But even though this was in the public sector, the activists said, this is helping Monsanto. They were clearly unable to make any distinction between private and public. There was just this mental imagery involved with GMOs and it clearly was not a very sophisticated approach. And the activists also constructed this image of, well, so the gene was a synthetic gene, but in the submission that the scientists made to the regulatory agency, they said it was closely related to one that was found in cows, as well as one in mint and various other things. And so the activists then had a picture of a loaf of bread with horns and hooves and stuff like that. And so the imagery of this was something, again, something weird and unpleasant. You wouldn't want to eat it. It was very clearly communicated. And the activists also set a date for when they were going to destroy the crop. That's where the scientists had to do something. And this forced their hand because scientists, by disposition, generally would like to stay in their labs, don't really want their autistic anyway. They don't like to speak to the general public. But they had to. And so I went in to try and help them just behind the scenes and said to them, you've got to win this battle in the public mind. Otherwise, you're wasting your time with your research. Not only will farmers never be able to use it, but it'll be destroyed next May, in six weeks' time. So they did a YouTube video which you can still see. They did a lot of media stuff. They took journalists around the site. And they framed the debate in the sense of, don't destroy research. We need knowledge. We need innovation rather than IU Pro or anti-GMO, which obviously is a bit further for people to take. And people were not in favor of destroying research. And I think that came through very clearly from public opinion and from the media response. Were they then pro-GMO? Well, at least you could then begin to have a debate about the merits of this particular crop, as opposed to this being about Monsanto or about all of the old-style imagery which comes along with it. So what I was, you said at the beginning that scientists are dry. Scientists are not dry when they're speaking amongst themselves and they've had a few drinks. They get very passionate. So you're suggesting we lube them up? They get very passionate indeed. Then I think people would realize that these are real human beings who are passionate about their work because they're passionate about the environment and about food security. We found a similar situation when we interviewed scientists in East Africa. I mean, first of all, they're kind of baffled that they're just scientists and they're working on stuff. How could that be perceived so badly? But also a real desire for the local scientific community to get credit for all the work that they're doing and for the country to be proud of their scientists. And I think it's a really important point you've made that if scientists get, even ag scientists who tend to be a low-key bunch, get pretty excited about what they're doing and why it's important, but they kind of stop when they realize there's a controversy and just say, I just don't get it. So pushing beyond that to explain things I think is really important. I want to ask a little bit. You had said that environment and science were two reasons why you really started thinking differently about this topic, but you also said that you really looked at it from a humanitarian point of view. Our primary focus is on food security and small-holder farmers. How do you think about it from that perspective and what is your thinking on the humanitarian side? Well, from a humanitarian perspective, whether or not you as a small-holder farmer have a successful harvest or not is the key definer of whether your kids can go to school, whether they'll be malnourished, whether you can even see your kids survive the year. It depends on how much you can grow yourself. We're talking about food security in rural areas across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, wherever. And I don't think people understand that because the talking points from the anti-biotech side tend to be there's enough food out there, it just needs to be distributed properly. There's some justice to some of those arguments, but they're very simplistic and very generalizing. And actually what people can grow themselves is the key issue. Now, if you can help them be more resilient against droughts with more water-efficient crops, if you can help them be more resilient against pest and diseases with pest-resistant crops, then it's got to be a crucial part. It's not going to be the be-all and the end-all because you're not helping them with corrupt officials, you're not helping them get access to capital, you're not dealing with poverty across the board. You know, these are much wider development imperatives, but saying that people should not have access to these seeds and saying that farmers should be denied the choice of what to plant because of my, well, superstition, if you like, in a Western country where I'm well-fed, I think is a very, very worrying and in many ways anti-humanitarian approach. And I've been very critical of Greenpeace for its campaign against golden rice because even if they say, even if it wouldn't work, it's worth a try, given that, what is it, half a million children are dying each year from vitamin A deficiency, because clearly what we're doing at the moment isn't solving the problem. And for Greenpeace to say that they already know it wouldn't work and therefore we shouldn't try it, I think is a very, very dangerous place to be. And for them as a... I don't want to focus just on that single organization because there's lots of different organizations who have worked in this area, I think that really will be a stain on the reputation of the whole environmental movement for decades unless that changes. Can you talk a little bit more? I want to go back to the science question. Do you see areas for dialogue and dispassionate discussion about this topic? And I asked that sort of in the context of what we talked about earlier, which is that GM and biotechnology is but a sliver of what we need to focus on for food security. But it is a lightning rod sliver, but it is also both a tool in the toolbox as well as sort of a gateway for other future technologies that you'd hope to see be able to progress. What are some of the forums or the ways to maybe have a better dialogue in a more reasonable dialogue? Is that within the science community? Is that within governments? What are your thoughts on that? Well, it is very difficult because everyone has an opinion on this and a lot of people's opinions are based on misconceptions even about how conventional crop breeding is done. We could be having this whole debate about chemical and radiation mutagenesis. Well, hybrids too. I don't think most people realize that F1 hybrids even exist. And so the idea was that crops that don't breed true were somehow an invention of Montanto via GMOs. GMO crops do breed true. So that's even a misconception in and of itself. The fact that farmers have been growing hybrid corn since whenever it is 1930, I don't think people realize. And so because this debate is based on misconceptions all the way across the board, it's very difficult to get to a place where you can actually reach any kind of rational decision. So you actually do have to tackle these at source and say, look, you're wrong about this in all of these different areas. What you believe is actually the fundamental opposite of the truth. That's one thing in the popular mind, but for the environmental movement to be not just complicit but actively promoting obvious untruths, I think is a very dangerous road to be going down because it claims to be and largely is evidence-based and science-based in many other areas. There's no disagreement between me and Greenpeace on the reality of climate change about the difficulties of biodiversity loss, of forest devastation, things like that. So all of these different areas, we need to protect what the good that the environmental movement is doing by ensuring it doesn't do damage in some other key areas as well. Let me ask you a question about something that you have not mentioned yet, which is the Cartagena protocol and what impact that's had on the debate and discussion and through the national government decisions about how to proceed. Well, Colestus Juma gave a speech about this recently and he was the head of the Biodiversity Convention at the time, I think, when this was framed and I think he's very critical of it in retrospect because it sort of froze in ASPIC the precautionary principle approach to this, which made a fundamental distinction between genetic modification and other forms of crop breeding, which is not real. I mean, if you could breed two types of new corn, one done conventionally and one done with GM, but they were exactly the same in terms of their genomic structure. You could sequence the whole genome and the DNA is exactly the same. They would still be regulated differently across the whole world. Now that is absurd, it's scientifically absurd, it's logically absurd and the fact that the protocol largely is based on that misconception, I think, is a real problem. There's also a misunderstanding about biodiversity here. So people tend to think that somehow wild biodiversity is influenced by the biodiversity or the diversity, the genetic diversity of cultivated crops. These are two completely different things in mind. I mean, obviously, there's important interactions, but they are completely different things. Yes, I think we should protect the diversity of cultivars as well for all sorts of reasons, but so does everybody else. We've got seed banks and so on. And there's also another misunderstanding, which is that a GM corn is the same worldwide. Well, it's not. The genes are bred into all of the different local varieties which are locally adapted. I mean, there's hundreds of different types of them. So, again, we've got a debate here that's focused on and based on misconceptions, which are so deep-seated that it's very difficult to move forward, I think, to have a rational outcome when you have debates based on misunderstandings. Well, that leads me to my next question. And I think this will be my last question, then we'll open up for audience questions. And I know you're not from the US, but I'm going to ask you to comment on what's happening here. We have, as you know, a really rolling, ongoing, and accelerating debate around labeling and around GM products in the US and the US food supply. And I'd like you just to kind of comment on it and sort of talk a little bit about where you see that going and what you think are some challenges around that. I mean, as a point of principle, I would agree with what the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences has said on this issue, which is that labeling is not just unnecessary, but positively damaging to public understanding of science in this area. Having said that, I don't think it's a winnable proposition to say to concerned consumers, food consumers, that they shouldn't have access to information that they say that they want. So we've got a dilemma there about what to do on this issue. And I think the industry has to respond by being creative and giving people the information that they say that they're after. You can't say, no, you are denied it, we're not going to tell you, we're not going to tell you what's in your food. And I think the only way I can think of how this might be resolved is for non-GMO products to be clearly labeled, and for that to be done voluntarily but to be done across the board. And so if you as a shopper want to choose GMO-free products in the same way that you might want to choose Halal if you're religiously inclined in that way or anything else, organic, then find you have the access to the information to do that. And then you have mandatory labeling which will then totally restructure the whole supply chain and will have knock-on effects which actually do affect food security in other parts of the world. So African governments are very concerned, for example, about their agricultural trading relationships. That means that they have GMO bans domestically which are then preventing their own farmers from growing disease resistant crops and so on and so forth. So definitely well-fed consumers is going to have an effect on food security and I think that whole aspect of this debate has not come through at all. Yeah, and I think there will be a lot more to talk about in that front and just so you all know CSIS recently published a fairly short paper called Trade Interbulations looking at some of the potential impacts of GM crops on trade flows from Africa especially to Europe and it really looks at the fact that GM crops that are exported tend to be non-GM crops like coffee, tea and cocoa and most of the crops that would be grown as GM crops like corn or maize would be traded domestically or even locally. So that is on our website and it's public so you're all welcome to take a look at that. I want to open up to some audience questions. What I will try to do is take two to three at a time, kind of bundle them up to really put Mark on the spot here. So if you will just raise your hand and when you have a question state your name, affiliation and a brief question gentlemen in the middle here. Pastor Britt Mitchell sorry, thank you. Pastor Britt Mitchell from the Renaissance Institute I do have a PhD and I'm twice as ignorant as you so it's about the subject especially. What concerns me is I keep hearing news stories that the seeds the replicating mechanism in these kind of things isn't there. So people have to keep going back and buying fresh seed each year and sometimes the seeds even cross lines to another farm and all of a sudden there's hassle that's my question I think in the seeding process is that the way it is and will people have to perpetually buy that kind of seed. Okay, thank you and I saw another hand let's see, right here in the front. Hi, I'm Paul Wagner of CPA Express you mentioned or suggested that scientific research that has been funded and part by the industry is unfortunately tainted yet the FDA doesn't require independent testing of GMOs they instead rely on their website it says they encourage industry to consult with the FDA before doing their marketing so there's not independent research going on that they don't require independent research to approve GMOs I'm confident that GMOs, all GMOs are safe or do you think there should be some sort of independent testing before they're released. Okay, we'll take those two questions because those are pretty big questions. The first one yes, you're completely wrong and this is one of the oldest myths in the book is the idea that somehow GMO crops are doing something new which is somehow tying farmers into an exploitative relationship with industry. This is one of the reasons why it became such a powerful idea in people's minds. The reality as I mentioned before is that when it comes to hybrid crops that's already been the case for decades and corn is a very good example of that but there's cotton as many other hybrid crops as well which don't breed true so you can't save your seed from one year to the next I mean you could do but you'd get a much less high yielding crop. The second aspect of this myth is it goes back to terminator technology which was proposed but never developed and the idea was actually to try and address the fears people had of contamination but it became seen as this way where you'd have suicide seeds, the terms which were coined were again very emotive and very powerful where the seeds wouldn't survive from one generation to the next and then farms would have to go back and so on and so forth and that never happened so most of the GMO crops you could and many farmers actually do save them from one year to the next and many of the proposals for food security based GM crops would have that aspect to them too so golden rice for example the whole point of it is that where farmers and where families are short of vitamin A and their health is suffering as a result, if they're growing that rice then they could grow that year after year after year that means somebody doesn't have to come and visit their village with vitamin A supplements it's something they can have themselves which really improves their resilience so I think that's one of the most fundamental misconceptions about this whole technology is this idea you speak to farmers actually and yes they have a technology agreement that they sign with Monsanto or whoever and this applies to the crop because this is a proprietary technology which is in the seed and so if they want to grow this seed then they sign a technology agreement which means that they then can't save the seed the basis of this thing I think but no one is forcing you as a farmer to grow it you can grow organic seed, you can grow any seed you like there's hundreds of different types of varieties on there but the chances are if you want to grow the GMO when you want to do it because it gives you a better return this is also the basis of the recent Supreme Court decision around GM soybeans where a farmer saved for several seasons his crop and then planted them and was taken to the Supreme Court and actually lost his case because he had deliberately violated he got the crops from the seeds from an elevator he grew the ones out, sprayed them with Roundup and found the ones which were Roundup ready so they had that trade then he grew those so what he was trying to do was to use Monsanto's technology without paying Monsanto it was classic piracy and the issue was at the Supreme Court whether or not the patenting covered self-replicating technology which is different from digital technology I as a writer don't want people to copy my books digitally because then that deproves me of a royalty but my books don't replicate themselves in the same way as he does so this was an important legal precedent which is why the Supreme Court wanted to consider it which I got teased about at home for finding fascinating my husband kept saying whoa, wow update me on that case okay and then the next the second question we had about the FDA oh well it's different in different places I mean the FDA the FDA doesn't doesn't require testing it doesn't require independent testing but everyone does it anyway so it's a bit like I mean every other area if you make a car as a manufacturer you're responsible for ensuring that car is safe or a washing machine or pretty much everything else you can think of we don't have whole government agencies which independently test cars and so the manufacturer is responsible for ensuring the safety of their product that's then double checked by the FDA or by the USDA or whatever they can explain to me the US regulatory system much better than I can in Europe there is independent testing which has been funded by the European Union and there are really there have been hundreds of different studies some of them animal test studies and so on there's a whole database of these you can find online so it is a myth that there's been no independent testing am I concerned about the safety aspect of GMOs no I'm not in the slightest extent for anything which is currently on the market we know what the genes are they encode for, we know whether they're allergenic or in any way potentially harmful I would probably more concerned about mutagenic conventional breeding and things which are affecting the genomes and crops without any knowledge of what the impact of that is going to be in the resulting food stuff and those can be released in the public in fact they can even be called organic so I think again there are misnomers here I don't actually think that there should be this very heavy regulatory burden placed on GM which isn't placed on other types of crop breeding at all so we need a more rational evidence based discussion about this where what's in the genome of the crop is the important thing not how you got there it's the outcome not the process which needs to be regulated okay next round of questions let's see we'll take gentlemen here and then man in the green shirt and then over here okay my name is Luis Cunam national security at national defense university I'm a biomedical engineer when I look at the data it is difficult for me and I have to give an example today if you talk about electronic health records they do not contain genetic information they do not contain for example your vaccine registry so it's very difficult to look at long-term effects of those vaccines when you combine them with the genes if you look at human life in general after your 65th birthday you start accumulating many many chronic conditions that develop and therefore the long-term effects of GMOs to me are completely unreliable the data that is being published is unreliable because you are not testing it's almost like saying you give a vaccine today and if you don't have a rush within a week you're okay you have no idea in the long term what are the effects of that so I will contend that that's the issue that I would like you to address okay we'll address that and then gentlemen in the green shirt thank you I'd like you to compare how you changed your point of view to what it might take to change the point of view of Gilles Saralini for the rest of the audience Gilles Saralini about a year ago published a paper which reported to show that rats eating GM corn had more cancer and subsequently most of the scientific community have said it was bad research so my question is basically a scientist of deciding that you hadn't looked at the science close enough here's a scientist who says he has and he has opposite point of view of you so what would it take him and then we had a gentleman over here yes I want to get back to your point could you just introduce yourself Mike Snow journalist I wanted to get back to your point on pushing buttons you tended to portray people that had questions about GMOs in a kind of stereotypical frankincense but there are many scientists many reputable scientists who have voiced concerns about GMOs have voiced concerns about health issues pertaining to GMOs like Dr. Arpaug Pushta who has spent 35 years at the Rowett Institute and was fired but there are many other scientists like him like Saralini like Shiv Chopra in Canada who was offered a million to $2 million by Monsanto to rubber stamp and fast-track RBG milk into the system they don't have it there we have it here it's the only place in the world where we have it and there are many scientists that also question your own credentials as this recent convert to pro GMO because I know you've written extensively for the new statesman and the Guardian but how many of those were about GMOs do you have a host of questions about the science establishment and scientific decision then gentlemen there mentioned vaccines we don't know the long-term effects well we do know the long-term effects the long-term effects are that you're protected against diseases which would otherwise do you substantial harm vaccines have saved billions of lives since their invention and I just can't see any arguments which make any plausible sense I could draw you a very clear correlation I could draw you a very clear correlative graph between the rise of organic food sales and the rise of autism and other chronic diseases across societies whether it's in the US or anywhere else would I suggest there's any causative relationship there I would not and I think the same would go for GMOs the test it's just it's scientifically completely implausible that there is any relationship there's nothing new in this food which could plausibly be having the same effects which are suggested and the same goes for vaccines and autism and this pertains to the gentleman's point there no I'm not an expert in this I'm not a biochemist I'm not a trained molecular biologist so the best I can do and this is the same for my attitude to the climate change debate where I'm not a climatologist either the best I can do is to say that 97-98% of the scientists out there who are experts on this and who are actively researching in this field have come to a very clear conclusion that this is very clearly advocated by the Royal Society by the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences read their consensus statement which was published about six months ago on labeling they say there is no basis for concern I can't remember the exact form words but there's no basis for concern about any differences between GMO crops and conventionally bred foods so if that's what the scientists are saying and you claim to be evidence based and you claim to be a science based organization or thinker you need to have respect for that you're welcome as an individual to make up your own mind about every issue in a democratic society but given that those of us who are lay people need to at some point figure out who to trust we can't go to the basis of all of the research in every single area then we need to ultimately respect the views of the authoritative academic institutions on this and this pertains to Cerellini he is an anti-GMO activist who also happens to be a professor who at the same time as publishing this research was selling a book called GMO's Our Evil and Dangerous or whatever it was called this was in French so I can't remember the translation that study was universally panned by every single academic institution across Europe and across the world for the simple fact that it was utterly flawed they took a type of rat which is predisposed to getting cancer if you let it live long enough let it live long enough and then found out lo and behold they all had tumors and most of the controls and they had a very small number of controls and no statistical significance to their results also had tumors they didn't show pictures of the control rats who hadn't been fed GMOs with massive tumors sprouting out of their bodies because that wouldn't have gone down so well in the media so this was straightforward propaganda and pseudoscience which is very unfortunate but again this is why the internet you can see all this stuff proliferating there was a lot of very striking pictures from these kinds of things we have to do better than that I cannot take a single marginal pseudoscientific viewpoint and say that this is the the bill on the end all I have to respect scientific consensus across this area just to that point what do you think are for example the best websites to look at to find basic scientific information is it triple AS are there other organizations well I mean the triple AS statement is just one page long there's some references in that there's been whole reviews now well I would also recommend people go to bio45.org which has an online database of literally hundreds of peer reviewed safety studies which have been done on GM crops and it actually aggregates those which are industry funded and those which are independent as well if you're concerned about that too that's great great okay other questions hopefully we'll have some in the back of the room gentleman in the blue shirt woman in the green shirt and then I'll go to you in the middle with the purple shirt and I'll go to the right I'm so proud well thank you very much Brian Greenberg with interaction I wondered if you might comment excuse me on the fact that the production of GM crops is not simply about the seeds that they take that they occur in a farming system which is largely a green revolution uses a great deal of fertilizers which especially in the case of nitrogen fertilizers contributes significantly to greenhouse gases and secondly that their use takes place in an economic system which generally doesn't favor the smallest holders the adopters tend to be larger commercial farmers and can not to be the poorest small holders and almost exclusively not the kind of subsistence producers that you referred to in justifying their use as a food security mechanism. Okay great thank you. Into the back here. Hey Kelly with Kalski with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation and Agriculture. For me one of the important parts of this GMO debate is the presence of adequate biosafety regulatory frameworks and I was wondering if you could please comment a little bit on that and you know I know that many of the developing countries don't necessarily have the capacity yet to develop these by themselves and you know whether you think that the private sector should play a role in helping these countries making sure that those are established. Okay great and then gentlemen in the middle with okay where's our microphone you just stand up and you'll spot you here. You're hard to miss. I'm easy to spot. I wanted to ask oh my name is Hayden Gowdy I'm with the GIC group and I was I wanted to ask you about labeling again. I was wondering if you could clarify about the costs and consequences of labeling. I believe there's a recent initiative in Washington State that's up for it's up for the ballot this fall just wondering if you could clarify the costs what the consequences would be for ag firms as well as you mentioned an alternative system labeling non GMO foods and I know terms like organic are heavily regulated whereas terms like natural are not so I was wondering if you could clarify would that be a regulatory system would that be something that's regulated or would that be dependent on firms just volunteering. Okay great so questions about sort of small holder farms and developing countries as well as labeling. Gentleman that began by talking about the green revolution I would defend that from a food security perspective Norman Bollack who of course was an American agronomist who died not so long ago won the Nobel Peace Prize in numbers in 1970 on the basis of having saved a billion lives through the green revolution. He and his colleagues turned India from a chronically impoverished famine stricken country into a food exporter when at about 10-15 years the same went for Pakistan, Mexico and much of the developing world with the exception of sub-Saharan Africa which is still a major concern. Yes that was done with with higher yielding seeds but that was a good thing yes that was done with more inputs, irrigation and also nitrogen fertilizers but you can't grow a crop without having a fertilizer there in order to provide the nutrients the crop needs and in nutrient deficient soils that was an important thing to do. Now there are disbenefits to the large-scale human alteration of the nitrogen cycle I read a whole chapter on this in my in my latest book and not least of which are nitrogen runoff, eutrophication in river systems, dead zones in places like the Gulf of Mexico. So I think this is an important area that agriculture needs to address and I think most farmers would agree with that. Biotechnology can potentially help as can conventional crop reading by having more nitrogen use efficient crops which need less fertilizer or use what is there more effectively. In the the long term the kind of holy grail is to get leguminous staple food crops which fix their own nitrogen and don't then need any kind of external input and I think the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other agencies have actually funded a multi-million dollar effort partly which is partly led by UK scientists to try and see whether this is even possible. I mean it's a long shot because the process of nitrogen fixation is a very complicated one it's not the case of inserting a bunch of genes and waiting for it to happen. So whether it's even possible we don't know but I think there's many ways in which biotechnology can potentially help deal with a nitrogen overuse problem. You said about larger commercial farmers well I think actually it's it's now the case that most GM crops in terms of the numbers of farmers cultivating them are now in the developing world. It's also the case that for BT cotton for example in India that's not necessarily just the big guys and there's been several social science studies which have shown that a lot of that there have been major monetary benefits to farmers for growing these new cotton seeds that's why they do it by the way they don't do it because they're being tricked every single year by these companies they do it because they understand their own self-interest and they have a better return they get a better crop and they don't have to put insecticide on it to the same extent. So there's biodiversity benefits to this too there was a study in China recently which showed that there was a big proliferation in non-target insects and birds and bees and all the rest of it because these crops were not being sprayed with insecticide. So this is a huge benefit here in terms of the agrochemical sector being which actually affects their products. I want to see GM crops which which get rid of agrochemicals so this idea that somehow they're part and parcel of the same package for next-generation biotech I think is a doesn't have to be and shouldn't be the case. Lady over there spoke about biosafety in developing countries. I think my primary concern on biosafety as an environmentalist is invasive species and invasive pathogens in particular which have nothing to do with biotechnology and which I think are very much insufficiently regulated. We are about to lose all of our ashtrays in the UK because of a new pathogen fungal pathogen which has come in and we've already lost the elm trees you have of course the words of the American chestnut. We lost all of our you lost all those too. I mean none of this has to do with biotechnology this has to do with biosafety and that for me is where the main area of concern is on this and I think that it is improperly regulated. I don't think GMOs need special biosafety protocols and regulation in every single country that's a way to basically freeze up the sector which is I think one of the reasons why it's been proposed and is so heavily focused on by people who are against the technology in principle. But yes you need some you need food safety regulation but whether every single sub-saharan African country can afford and should do its own one I don't know it might make sense to try and have a continent wide approach where there is a pooling of resources between lots of small countries with very themselves very inefficient resources. And just to finish up on the labelling issue I don't know how you'd run it. The organic sector is in Europe is self-policing there are several different organic certification companies in fact but you do need to have consumer trust for whatever that is on the label. People need to know that it's real and it's not just natural as you said it's not just something which any company can make up but I think food products which don't have any GMO in them and that's actually not very many because cheese would do beer would do anything with any kind of corn derivatives would do so that's most sweetened drinks and pretty much everything else. So it wouldn't actually be too much trouble to label those which are GMO free and either microorganisms or throughout the agricultural production chain and so that's why I think that's the key thing if you as a shopper wants to buy GMO entirely GMO free things then then you should be able to do that but the cost of that and there would be some incremental cost should be born as you you know because that's your choice and you want you want to exercise that choice fine you have to pay a bit more as you do with organic and I think that's the right way to do it as opposed to mandating labelling across the entire sector which would be very difficult to do and would probably cost quite a lot of money I don't know how much it would be I don't think it's important I don't think it's possible to even imagine how you'd quantify it because it depends on the on the choices of billions of people across not just this is a globalised food system we have here it's not just choices that consumers make in America do affect people in other parts of the world as well because of these supply chains and this trading systems. And just the overall perception of what America does has ripple effects just like what Europe does has ripple effects. Yeah and in Europe effectively has has bands on GMOs and it's not they're not league I mean they are there are legal bands in some countries which are illegal in European law so the whole the whole thing is a complete mess also I mean Italy just introduced a ban on GMO corn and which it can't justify scientifically because there's no scientific basis to it and so that is also illegal under European law so the European system is completely broken and and the UK environment minister recently made a speech essentially saying they were going to pull out of Europe because the whole sector of biological research is being frozen out for from an entire continent here so we're being left with a food sector which is basically turning into a museum and because we can't do agricultural innovation because of of certain preoccupations of certain people within certain countries well I think we've just about hit the hour mark here 11 o'clock is when we promise to stop but I wanted to give you the opportunity are there any is there anything we haven't talked about that you wanted to touch on or any closing comments you'd like to make. I just think we have to be very specific about this I was at the Donald Danforth plant science center recently and I got to hold one of their GMO cassava plants which is in a pot at the moment along with various other ones and cassava is a very important staple food for many different countries in sub-Saharan Africa it's being affected by a viral disease called brown street virus which just trashes the tuber I mean you can't you can't eat it it just just destroys the whole thing and there's no way unfortunately for this to be dealt with by conventional breeding so for me the important issue here is about the choice of farmers in developing countries should they be given the choice of whether to plant a virus resistant version which is going to actually be able to feed their families when this virus does strike I think they should have that choice at the moment the anti biotech lobby is saying that that choice should be denied and there should be a ban implemented across every country across the whole world on this entire technology and I don't think that's a supportable position I don't think it's an environmental position well thank you and I should mention you don't just cover biotech you have just released an e-reader of nuclear power which is available for about $3 I just trying to just try to upset everyone but yeah yeah but that's I think you can find it through your website and it's on Amazon it's on Amazon so you can take a look at that if you're interested in nuclear power we also have a new we actually have a new report at CSIS on the future of the nuclear power industry in the US just to you know diversify our topics really widely but thank you for taking the time to come here I think there's been a lot of interest in sort of hearing from you here in the US we appreciate your time thank you all for joining us and please join me in thanking Mark