Scottish Government ‘letting people down’ on GM position says former chief scientist

The Scottish Government is letting citizens down by not explaining why they rejected scientific evidence in banning GM crops, former chief scientific adviser Dame Anne Glover has said.

In August the Scottish Government announced it would use new EU rules to opt out of European consents for GM crops in order to protect Scotland’s “clean, green status”.

In an interview for Monday’s Holyrood magazine, Glover, who has also advised the European Commission on science, said the statement is political.

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“Of course, governments are perfectly justified in making political statements. Where my concern was is that they implied, in what they said, that GM technology was in some way unproven, and particularly for me, that they described conventional agriculture as being ‘clean and green’.”

The use of agrochemicals in production meant traditional methods were “old and dirty” she said.

She called on government to be clearer about their reasoning for the decision.

“It could be ethical, there are lots of reasons governments make decisions, but I feel they’re letting us down. I feel let down as a citizen if they start being not crystal clear about why they’re rejecting the evidence, and they start to blame the evidence.”

Glover said the decision could have “unintended consequences” in developing countries, especially in Africa, where GM technology is being trialled.

“I am sure they did not intend this, but many nations in Africa look to us and say, hang on a minute, Scotland is banning this, maybe we shouldn’t do it. We have the luxury of banning it in Scotland, and they don’t have such a luxury in Africa, yet they are very influenced by our decisions,” she said.

Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale this week said she was “baffled” at the Scottish Government decision.  "That is not simply a failure of evidence based policy making. It is contempt for the scientific community," she said.

A spokesman for Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead called Dugdale’s comment an “ill-informed attack”.

“Our decision to protect the clean, green status of Scotland's £14bn food and drink sector has been shown to be leading the way - a total of 19 EU countries, including France and Germany and Northern Ireland and Wales, have also now followed Scotland's example.

“That covers over 60 per cent of both Europe's population and means that more than 60 per cent of the continent's arable land will not have approved GM crops grown on it.

"We very much value the views of our scientific community, but we have a responsibility to consider other social, environmental and economic factors too," he said.

In the Holyrood interview Dame Glover said the Government was right to scrutinise the evidence on Fracking, an area where the evidence has a “different level of maturity”.

“My worry is that if we are to maintain an average global temperature rise of just two degrees or below – but I don’t think we’d ever get below two degrees – we need to keep about 80 per cent of all fossil fuel in the ground. That includes unconventional gas,” she said.

For the full interview read the new issue Holyrood magazine on Monday