Genes blue
Sydney Morning Herald
Date: 13/03/99
A "citizens's jury" has been considering its verdict on genetically modified food. DEBORAH SMITH reports.
ON ONE side of the house sat the people. On the other, across the long wooden table that many a prime minister has thumped, sat the experts. And an eclectic bunch they both were.
The 14 people selected to sit on the "citizens' jury" for Australia's first consensus conference, which concluded yesterday, ranged in age from a 19-year-old Bathurst student, Alison McMurtrie, to a 57-year-old Queensland stockbroker, Frank Byrne. A mother of three, Lise Vasiliou, is of Norwegian extraction, Rhian Williams is a "10-pound tourist from Wales", and Allyson Croydon, a dental technician from the Northern Territory, is Aboriginal.
Panellists variously identified themselves as vegetarian, Christian, a Girl Guide leader and an Army Reserve recruiting officer. But Vasiliou's revelation that she had recently "taken up a bit of
fortune-telling" was perhaps most appropriate. For the issue the lay panel discussed over three days - the risks and benefits of genetically modified (GM) food - is rich in uncertainties, particularly the long-term impact of the technology on health and the environment.
Michael Field, a West Australian business consultant, might also have found use for his unusual skill. He describes himself as a master practitioner of neuro linguistic programming, a technique that focuses in part on the mannerisms of successful communicators.
And there was certainly a lot of interesting body language on the experts' side of the table at Old Parliament House for him to observe, as these expert "witnesses" tried to persuade the lay "jury" of their point of view in the two days of presentations and cross-examination.
A condition of consensus conferencing - a process pioneered in Europe as a way for the public to influence policy on contentious scientific issues - is for the lay panel to be exposed to as wide a range of opinions as possible.
But it is probably not stipulated that those with the most diametrically opposing views be seated close together, as happened in Canberra.
On one red leather bench sat Associate Professor Peter Wills, a physicist from the University of Auckland, who believes there should be a royal commission into genetic engineering, so potentially destructive to ecological systems and human society is it.
Squashed beside him was Dr Jim Peacock, the director of the CSIRO Division of Plant Industry. This leading scientist fervently believes GM foods will provide greater safety, by reducing the pesticides and other contaminants in our food.
GM foods will be cheaper and more nutritious, says Peacock, who has faith in Australia's current regulatory system for assessing the safety of GM products, by looking at each organism or food individually.
Next bench along sat an even odder odd couple. Dr Bill Blowes represented Monsanto, the agricultural giant that leads the world in developing GM crops, including the herbicide-resistant soybeans that are potentially present, yet so far unlabelled, in 60per cent of processed foods on Australian supermarket shelves.
Next to him sat his company's most outspoken critic, the conservation lobbyist Bob Phelps, the director of the Gene-Ethic Network. Phelps told the panel there should be a five-year moratorium on the release of GM organisms into the Australian environment. That would give the Government time to establish its proposed Gene Technology Office to oversee regulation of the technology. Also, he said, international standards on labelling of GM foods and biosafety protocols governing
their trade and transport should be finalised by then.
Consumer and industry representatives were seated side by side on the next bench. Mara Bun, of the Australian Consumers' Association, lambasted Australia's regulatory system for assessing GM organisms and GM foods as "woefully inadequate". She said the Australia New Zealand Food Authority had conflicting roles. It was supposed to protect people's health by assessing the safety of genetically modified products, yet it was also charged with facilitating export markets for the food industry.
Bun argued strongly that all GM foods should be labelled.
Her benchmate proved to be one of the most strident speakers of the conference. Gene technology was the key to future food production, with as great as - or greater - revolutionary impact as the computer age, said Dr Geoffrey Annison, the scientific director of the Australian Food and Grocery Council.
Annison expressed regret that health ministers had decided in December that all GM foods should be labelled, even those judged by scientific standards to be "substantially equivalent" to conventionally produced foods in chemical composition, nutritional value and taste.
Labelling such equivalent foods implies a difference where none exists, he said. It would be unenforceable without sophisticated, time-consuming, costly testing.
It was during question time that the strengths of this conferencing approach were displayed. The surprisingly articulate members of the lay panel cut to the core issues that bothered them as ordinary citizens, and labelling was a big one.
"People lose faith in a company if they can't get information," Vasiliou told Annison. "I simply want choice," said Denise Dolan, a Sydney medical secretary.
Ian Lee, who has a carpet-cleaning business in northern NSW, had difficulty coming to terms with the phrase "substantially equivalent". "Surely any genetic modification is a substantial difference?"
he said.
Field suggested GM-free foods could be guaranteed by careful selection of ingredients during manufacture.
Rod Poulton, of Melbourne, who makes handcrafted bush furniture, was more blunt: "I don't see what is so damned hard. It's either there, or it's not."
Rhian Williams, from Canberra, said "substantial equivalence" of a food was defined only in scientific terms, and ignored ethical concerns about the method of production, and the impact of gene technology on the agricultural economy.
"For people there are other important factors to consider," she told the experts.
The writing was on the wall, although the lay panel went on to deliberate right through the night until 6.30am yesterday in order to produce its consensus report.
It had clearly not been convinced by the enthusiasts for the technology.
Only 200 people around Australia responded to the original newspaper advertisement calling for volunteers for a "national science research project which will affect us all". The final 14 were selected by an independent marketing company to reflect a wide range of views on GM foods.
Nevertheless, the Australian panellists' report is far more wary of the technology than that of the Canadians, who held their first consensus conference on the same topic last weekend. The difference could be a greater faith in the established regulatory system in Canada, aided by widespread government dissemination of information about biotechnology.
Although the Australian lay panel picked the experts they wanted to hear from, as is protocol, the voice of the regulatory agencies was one missing component at this first conference.
But the people certainly had their say.
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