MONDAY 8 MARCH 1999

DR ARPAD PUSZTAI and DR STANLEY EWEN

  126. Dr Pusztai, thank you very much indeed for coming along this evening to give evidence to our Select Committee. You will know, I think, that we are doing an inquiry into Scientific Advice to Government, and, in doing that inquiry, we thought it would be a good idea if we took a certain number of case studies, to see what is happening in the scientific world and, where there are controversial bits of science, how government is coping with advice it is receiving, in the face of that scientific controversy. And, because of the circumstances around your experimentation and your results, we thought it would be a good idea if we started off with you and your case study, in the first instance. So we are most grateful to you for coming along this evening and helping us with our evidence. We shall, of course, be focusing quite a lot on the World In Action TV programme, and that will not surprise you. Dr Ewen, we will approach you for answers from time to time, but, I think, when we do so we shall direct our questions specifically at you, otherwise our questions will be to Dr Pusztai. Dr Pusztai, the World In Action programme, that you pre-recorded, I wonder if you could tell me how long before the transmission you pre-recorded it?
  (Dr Pusztai) It was exactly seven weeks.

  127. And in that programme you discussed your results and you discussed in general terms the possibility of the general public being used as guinea-pigs. Can you just confirm that your comments about the possibility of the general public being used as guinea-pigs was a general expression and was a general concern, and was not necessarily relating to your experiments or the potatoes you used in your experiments?
  (Dr Pusztai) It was a general comment. Having come across what is submitted to the various Novel Foods and other committees, knowing exactly the extent of what is required, and compared it with our own experience, I thought that it was perhaps a fair comment; maybe it was not a very wise comment but it was a very fair comment, at the time.

  128. I am sure, Dr Pusztai, it was a very fair comment; it only had some difficulty when it was linked in some people's minds with other things that were said in the programme. But it was a free-standing comment. I am sure it was a very fair one. But could I just ask you, did you think it was appropriate to discuss on television the results that you had, before those results had been subject to peer review?
  (Dr Pusztai) This is a debatable point, that what I disclosed were results; they were certainly not data. It was a long-standing policy of the Institute to have a sort of cautious approach to GM-related matters, and we all felt, including Professor James, that the route we had to take should be a very, very gradual and well-researched route. So, in a sense, what I expressed there was nothing surprising, considering the background of the Institute's work in that direction. What I eventually actually said was that I feel concerned that some of the testing techniques are not up to what we thought it was necessary to do, and therefore we should have more testing. We said that we felt concerned, so they asked: "Why do you feel concerned?", and, obviously, the reason for it was because we had done some experiments which made us feel concerned; and that was the background to it.

  129. If some experiments had not been done, do you think it is appropriate that an eminent scientist such as yourself should go on television and discuss sophisticated experiments when the work was not complete, knowing perhaps, as you did, the programme was going to be a controversial programme and was going to take a hard stance against genetically modified foods?
  (Dr Pusztai) I was not sure at all in my own mind, when I did do it; I did not know what would be the final outcome of the programme; the programme had changed quite a bit, and I had exactly 150 seconds in it.

  130. And you did not know, at the time you were asked to go on the programme, it was likely to be a hostile programme?
  (Dr Pusztai) No; no, not at all.

  131. My final question. The GNA 110-day trials, at what stage were they when you filmed this episode for the World In Action programme in June of last year?
  (Dr Pusztai) I think that, without being very technical, 99 per cent of it was complete.

  132. The experimentation and the results?
  (Dr Pusztai) Yes, and it is also dated. It is dated, even in the audit report; there is in the submission, the actual date of the calculations, and the completion dates are there, and you have a copy of it.

  Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.

  133. There was confusion, as you recall, at the time, Dr Pusztai, because it was published in the press as being experiments using ConA-spiked potatoes; can you account for the confusion which arose, because there seemed to be reasonable doubt that the experiments had been done with GNA?
  (Dr Pusztai) Yes. I know exactly where the confusion came in. The confusion came in because, if you remember, I said there were two lines of genetically modified potatoes, but because I was not to disclose any experimental details, I did not say what these were; as it so happens, they were both GNA lines. We have never done any ConA-GM experiments, genetically modified potato experiments, and I think that a lot of people actually jumped to the wrong conclusion about them. There were two lines, both of them were genetically modified and had the GNA gene, and the reason why we say that there were two lines and two kinds is because they were not substantially equivalent, they were not substantially equivalent to the parent, but they were not substantially equivalent in composition to each other, so they had to be regarded as two different types of potatoes.

  134. Dr Pusztai, the Rowett press release of 10 August last year, on GM foods, states that the preliminary results of studies with Jack bean ConA genes in GM potatoes suggested that these potatoes caused stunted growth and reduced immune response in rats. As a matter of interest, were you or your team consulted on the contents of this document before it was released?
  (Dr Pusztai) I am afraid not; that is the other bit of the confusion. As I say, a lot of people jumped to conclusions about things, and, for some reason or other, which I do not fully understand, that press release went out, and I only had a copy of it on the14th, to be precise, from my secretary; and I could not understand, when people had originally `phoned me on the 11th, asking: "Why is it that they are talking about ConA, we have not done ConA genetically modified potato experiments?" So if you ask the question and the question is the wrong question, it is very difficult to give a coherent answer, because I wanted to talk about GNA-GM potatoes and people were starting to ask me: "Have you done any ConA-GM experiments?" and I had to say: "No."

  135. I presume then that you would agree that you have never discussed ConA-GM feeding experiments with the press; is that right?
  (Dr Pusztai) No.

  136. You have not; right; thank you.
  (Dr Pusztai) They asked me, over the `phone, but from the 11th onwards I never spoke.

  137. So you have not spoken to the press about ConA-GM experiments?
  (Dr Pusztai) No.

  138. Dr Pusztai, Professor Philip James, the Director of the Rowett Research Institute, tells us that the weekend before the World In Action programme was broadcast you were "bombarded at home by enquiries, praise and criticisms from all over the world." What do you think triggered that interest?
  (Dr Pusztai) There was, of course, a press release by the World In Action programme. Again, they seemed to have missed me, with these press releases, I only received that press release about a week later, so I did not know what it was that people were `phoning me for, on Sunday afternoon. And there were actually three major contacts; one was with a BBC programme, which was broadcast next morning, on BBC Radio Four (the Today programme), and there was a very extensive discussion, in which they played some of the things I said into the `phone. But Dan Verakis, who represented Monsanto, was actually present in the studio, and I listened to it time and time again, because I just wanted to find out whether I did say anything about ConA; I did not, there was no ConA in that discussion. Now whether you regarded this as a blitz, having three major telephone—in fact, the BBC kept me up till about 1 o'clock in the morning, which was not very welcome, because at 6 o'clock I had to go into the GMTV studio, where I could hardly keep my eyes open.

  139. Can you remember—Professor James says that there were criticisms as well—who did the criticisms come from?
  (Dr Pusztai) I do not know; what criticisms? I am sorry, I do not know, you will probably have to ask Professor James, because I do not recollect any criticisms.