Western Mail
(Cardiff)

Science In Some Form Has Always Been With Us

"The human mind, like the parachute, is best kept open when in use" - one of the numerous quotes and phrases that I wrote down when I attended some of the lectures last week at the British Association's Annual Festival of Science at the University of Wales, Cardiff.

It's a phrase which I am sure members of the Government's BSE Inquiry Team will have well to the forefront when they visit farms in East Wales today. One of the Farms is the dairy holding of the Carmarthenshire NFU Vice Chairman Dai Davies at Whitland. During the visit they will also have discussions with NFU Cymru-Wales chairman Hugh Richards.

The other phrase from the conference that stuck in my mind was a statement from an eminent scientist in the field of water pollution. He said that after some 35 years or so as a government adviser, he felt that farming today had more in sympathy with the environment than in past decades. Welcome news indeed!

One of the key agricultural papers was prepared by the NFU Deputy President, Tony Pexton, who, also due to other pressing engagements in London, could not appear in person. His paper was presented by NFU West Country member Archie Montgomery of Yeovil. And most effectively he did so! In his paper, Tony Pexton said it was a fundamentalist view that science had no place in food production.

He wrote, "Science has been involved in the food chain and agriculture for years. The work of a French chemist, Louis Pasteur, lengthened shelf life and made food stuffs safer. The work of the refrigeration engineer opened up the grasslands and plains of New Zealand and Argentina to European consumers.

"Other than for a short time during and after World War I, Britain relied on a cheap food policy, supplied for expanding output of large areas of the world. Home agriculture was allowed to decline to the extent that some areas of Britain were not even farmed.

"However, World War II, with both its U-boat threat to the UK and the food shortages and; in some cases, starvation in the German occupied territories, made every government determined to be less reliant in the future on food imports. After all, one of the prime roles of a government is to ensure that their electorate is fed, and many a war has been fought to ensure that this is done.

"After World War II, mainland Europe started the CAP, and the UK encouraged more domestic food production. At the same time, of course, the world population started, and has continued, to grow at an unprecedented rate. A whole range of sciences were employed to meet the demand for increased domestic food production.

"Geneticists, both of plants and animals, used their skills to increase the production potential of our stock. Artificial insemination in livestock was developed to enable better genetic potential of certain individuals to be used to a greater extent than natural service, thus helping to generate the wider use of genetically superior animals. Nutritionists helped us to understand the needs of the improved plants and animals so that we are now able to feed them more precisely so as to help them express their genetic potential.

"Chemist and vets have helped us to protect plants and animals from pest and disease and, in the case of plants, competition from weeds, all again to allow the better expression of genetic potential.

"Engineers have designed and developed storage facilities, which in the case of fruit and vegetables may have changed temperature or modified atmosphere to help preserve product to extend its marketing season. Livestock is now housed, to the benefit of both the stock and the staff."

Thus, he argued, a vast range of scientific knowledge, expertise and endeavour, had been applied to agriculture over the past 50 years and had worked well.

"At the same time, science and technology have opened up not only the world markets to our produce, but also our markets to world production.

"The range of choice and abundance of supply are at a level today that no previous generation has known. The local supermarket will carry 20,000 lines of product. Fruit and vegetable no longer have seasons. If you want strawberries at Christmas then you can have them probably imported from Israel or California, thanks to the technology of the 747, but you can have them.

"At the same time science and technology have improved the safety of food beyond all recognition and allowed, for better or worse, production specialisation so that sandwiches made in Hull today can be on sale in Paris or Cologne tomorrow. Pizzas made in Ireland are distributed throughout Europe.

"Partly as a result of this abundance of supply, but also as I believe because of greater affluence, people are becoming concerned not only about the amount of food on the shelf, but also how it is produced. What effect does its production have on animal welfare and the environment?

"This is a global problem. Estimates of the speed of growth of the world population vary; what is undeniable is that the number of mouths in the world is growing and the surface area available to feed them from is for anything shrinking."

He said so-called intensive farming had a band press in recent years.

"It is accused of a range of issues from animal welfare abuses to polluting land, air and water.

But it is certain that the alternative of organic production is the road to mass starvation. Vegetarianism, while it addresses the question of the efficiency of the conversion of grain, totally ignores the tremendous contribution that grassland, heather, moorland and other non-cropable areas (in the case of the United Kingdom 50 per cent of our land area) can make to converting what is inedible to people into a totally nutritious, healthy product, i.e. meat and milk.

"In the drive to feed more people from less land, of course, mistakes have been made. Indeed, it wold be strange if they hadn't. The drive to reduce costs has led at farm level, to more specialisation in cropping with less diversity of crops in a given area. Natural features such as hedges, woodland and wetlands been removed (with grants) and some materials which at the time of their introduction were thought to be the answer to certain problems, have themselves brought problems in their wake.

"The Persistence of DDT the accumulations of organo-chlorines in the food chain, and the discovery of undesirable substances in water are all examples of where mistakes, either in the substance itself or its use, have been made.

"But in the way of everything from a child learning to walk, to space travel, we are getting better at it."