Majority of members of UK's new GMO regulatory committee have conflicts of interest

A large majority – seven out of eleven, or 64% – of the members of an important new subcommittee tasked with evaluating the safety of GM foods and animal feed have potential, probable, or definite conflicts of interest,  in the form of vested interests in the liberalisation or commercialisation of GM technologies or related products, according to our analysis. 

Our finding comes shortly after the publication of an important paper in Nature Food, the highest ranking journal on food science and technology, which found extensive conflicts of interest in UK regulatory committees on GMOs and other food safety issues. The experts who undertook this analysis point out that conflicts of interest (COIs) are critical to public trust in decision making and conclude that ideally such regulatory or advisory bodies "should not include anyone with COIs that deserve to be declared".

But in our GMWatch analysis of the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee on products of genetic technologies destined for food and feed purposes, we found that four out of its 11 members have probable or definite conflicts of interest; and three out of the 11 have potential conflicts of interest that need to be clarified. In other words, only four out of the 11 (36%) have no apparent conflicts of interest.

Independent and transparent?

The ACNFP PGT Subcommittee was recently set up under the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (ACNFP), with the vital role of conducting risk assessments of GM foods and feed under UK legislation. It reports to the ACNFP and advises the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Food Standards Scotland. 

The ACNFP is sponsored by the FSA and calls itself "an independent expert committee", which is why the issue of conflicts of interest is so important. The FSA is responsible for designing the risk assessment for the UK's new regulatory regime on GMOs, including the policy on GMO labelling, although it is already clear that it has no intention of asking for GMO labels on new GMOs. 

The ACNFP PGT Subcommittee met five times in 2022. Much of their business on GMOs is noted in agendas as "reserved" (or secret, at least for the time being), making a mockery of the FSA's claim to act not just "independently" but "transparently".

Study finds extensive conflicts of interest in UK's GMO regulatory committees
Our findings on this important new GMO regulatory committee come soon after the publication of a paper by Profs Erik Millstone and Tim Lang on conflicts of interest in UK food regulatory institutions, including the FSA, the ACNFP, and another GMO regulatory body, the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE). Millstone and Lang found that each of them included members declaring interests at some point, with some panels having more experts with conflicts of interest than without.

Millstone and Lang based their findings on the declarations of interest of the members of the different committees. They did not analyse the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee, probably because it was formed after they wrote their paper – hence the need for our analysis.

Millstone and Lang found that on the FSA's Science Council, the proportion declaring conflicts of interest has been rising, and in November 2022 there was a six-to-five majority with such conflicts.

Of the FSA's five topic-focused committees, all had majorities with conflicts of interest at some stage. At the ACNFP, the "parent" committee of the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee, the proportion of people with conflicts of interest has risen in recent years, with nine out of 16 members (56%) declaring such conflicts in 2020, 11 out of 19 members (58%) in October 2021, and a peak of 14 out of 21 members (67%) in November 2022.

Too close to industry

In GMWatch's view, a cynic might conclude that the numbers of conflicted people have risen with the UK's departure from the EU and consequent plans to liberalise GMOs. That said, conflicts of interest on GMO regulatory committees have long been a source of concern. For instance, over two decades ago a UK government minister pledged to overhaul of the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE) because there was "a general view that some of the people were rather too close to the industry and rather too pro-GM".

Despite that, Millstone and Lang found that only one of the seven current members of ACRE declared no conflicts of interest in 2022. The other six (86%) had conflicts of interest with 16 different corporations. 

Indeed, our own GMWatch analysis of March 2022 found that 100% of the members of ACRE have potential or actual conflicts of interest that may enable them to benefit from the weakening of the regulations around GMOs. For our analysis, we expanded our research beyond the members' own declarations of interest, and termed some conflicts of interest "potential" as well as the more obvious "actual" ones – possible explanations for the small single-person difference in conclusions between us and Millstone and Lang.

Millstone and Lang also found that despite earlier ministerial assurances that those with commercial conflicts of interest would always remain a minority, by 2008, a majority (nine out of 14) of FSA Board members had active or recent commercial conflicts of interest. The proportion of FSA Board members who declared conflicts of interest peaked in 2008 but subsequently declined. In 2014, the numbers with and without conflicts of interest were equal, but the chair was among those who declared a conflict, and chairs have a casting vote in the event of tied votes. In December 2020, the FSA Board had a five to four majority of those declaring conflicts of interest, but in 2022, three of nine declared them.

Millstone and Lang write, "COIs are important because they may undermine public trust in decision-making and challenge the FSA as it tries to enhance public trust."

They conclude, "If the FSA, or any such regulatory or advisory body, is completely to eliminate and avoid corporate capture, its board and advisory committees should not include anyone with COIs that deserve to be declared."

We agree with this conclusion and warn the public that decisions on GMOs reached by the committees examined in this article cannot be assumed to be objective.
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Read the full article on the GMWatch site for our analysis of interests of the ACNFP PGT Subcommittee members and access linked sources:
https://gmwatch.org/en/106-news/latest-news/20157
 

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