Andrew Arbuckle: Science and nature on collision course

IT WOULD appear we are still in a bit of a fankle over cloning, where the science and the commercial imperative have moved ahead of the political world and now the politicians are trying to catch up.

Last week the North-east farmer at the centre of the row over cloned cattle in his dairy herd announced that he was going to apply for a licence to sell his milk under a special label. His reckoning is that milk from cloned cows will have had less recourse to antibiotics and it will generally be healthier and so it should gain a premium in the market.

This is an interesting move and, provided he can get the licence required, it will be a case of the consumer deciding yes or no to milk from cloned cows.

Meanwhile in the political world, the European Union is not expected to take a definite position on the issue until November. It will not be a straightforward process as the various decision making pillars - the Council, the Commission and the Parliament - will require to bat the issue back and forward before coming to a decision.

All very messy and all too late in the day as far as cloned produce is concerned. Why not just let the consumers decide?

Still on new technology, the EU has also to sort out where is stands on genetic modification of plants. Currently, GM crops can be banned on either scientific or environmental grounds.

But a paper from the Commission earlier this summer decided that this should be extended to give member states the flexibility to ban GM crops on other grounds.

At first glance this is a neat devolution of power and responsibility but closer inspection reveals a whole pack of problems.

Within the UK, there might well be a division of policy north and south of the Border, with Westminster taking a view that GM crops should be allowed and a Scottish Government taking a different pitch.

We have already seen the problems and issues that emerge with cross-Border trading. Can you imagine the problems if English farmers were using a potato variety that had resistance to blight in its genes and Scottish growers were busy spraying expensively to keep this disease at bay?

And what would it do to the Scottish seed potato industry if it was not allowed to grow this blight-resistant variety?

From the marketing end it throws up another set of problems. Would supermarkets specify non GM produce only and would that bring benefits to one part of the UK?

The Commission report is still at the proposal stage and George Lyon, MEP, has been handed the brief by the European agricultural committee to bring forward a response within the coming months.Tackling this GM issue might make Lyon's previous efforts on CAP reform seem easy peasy.

This past week also saw the unusual spectacle of one of the most enthusiastic supporters of GM technology being used in arable cropping point out that there could be initially a negative effect on income if GM crops were grown.

Gordon Rennie, who in his youth broke the world record for wheat production using non-GM technology and who now farms in the fertile part of Fife, reckoned Scottish farmers were currently benefiting from Scotland being GM free.

His calculations were based on the extra cost of imported non-GM maize. Distillers have to pay some 7 per tonne for this product compared with the GM version and by his calculation this helps keep the price of wheat up by a similar amount in Scotland.

The ban on importing GM oilseeds also helps the home market. In this case, he put the current premium about 27 per tonne for home produced rape.

However, he saw these financial benefits as only temporary blips on a wider vision where GM plants could produce real long-term benefits.

Some 10 per cent of the arable land in the world is currently producing GM crops. Rennie's belief was that biotechnology holds the key to solving global food poverty and starvation.