NFU literature proudly proclaims itself to be, “The Democratic organisation for farmers in England and Wales”. However ground members may not vote for the NFU’s Council Heads, nor do they hold any power to determine who is chosen. As Oliver Watson, a frustrated farmer put it, “89 decrepit, unimaginative, superannuated, self-important male ex-farmers and one woman sit round a table playing the game called “Buggins Turn”.

The rules are as simple as they are stultifying. All office-holders move slowly up the totem pole and – provided they don”t say anything which will upset anyone – they take their turn near the top”. The undemocratic nature of the Union’s ruling Council can be partly explained by the self-selecting elitism of its structure. In order to be on the Council, farmers have to be able to regularly leave their farms to spend days in London.

In the current farming climate, where average annual farming incomes do not exceed £11,000, it inevitably ensures that only the wealthy farmers who employ assistants can ever afford, let alone hope, to sit on the Council. No wonder then, that this same NFU Council continues to allow 80% of farm subsidies to go to just 20% of Britain’s farmers.

According to Corporate Watch the NFU has over £20 million pounds of its members money invested in large companies, including five biotechnology companies and the supermarket giant, Tesco. The launch of the NFU’s Red Tractor Logo scheme was at a South London Tesco store.

When the NFU was asked about this apparent conflict of interest in their investments, their spokesperson, the Director Roger Ward, told Red Pepper: “We don”t entertain Tesco. We meet with the largest buyer of foodstuffs in the food chain. We don”t like this, but this is the reality. Our members supply produce to Tesco and it is our duty to do business with them”.

Upon probing him further on the Union’s link to biotechnology multinationals, he responded by saying that, “I can tell that your article is rubbish”. On the pretext of being transferred to another spokesperson, the reporter was duly cut off.

However, according to Corporate Watch, prominent NFU members have in the past accepted paid trips to the United States as guests of Monsanto. Furthermore, one of the NFU’s Council members, Guy Smith, was until very recently, a high ranking panel member of CropGen, an organisation “whose mission it is to make the case for GMcrops”.

FARM is an alternative farming group, born out of deep distrust of, amongst other things, the NFU’s handling of the Foot and Mouth crisis. In line with Corporate Watch, they are also deeply critical of the NFU. As Zac Goldsmith a co-founder of the group says, “The NFU is a powerful group, it’s dominated farm policy for decades, and has all the political access it needs, and yet it has at the same time presided over the near total collapse of British farming. In short, yes, I think the NFU has let us all down very badly.”

Much of the criticism stems from perceptions that the NFU Council is closely embedded with big businesses and Westminster. Far from taking the grievances of farmers to government, the reverse has been seen to be happening, with many seeing the NFU unapologetically siding with government departments and multinationals. The Foot and Mouth crisis was a case in point. At the time of the outbreak, the NFU regional representative for Cumbria conducted a poll as to whether farmers favoured immunisation, or culling of livestock. The poll showed that 70% of NFU members in the affected region favoured immunisation, and yet the NFU still sided with, and even justified, the government’s mass slaughtering program.

The NFU also used to boast about the precise amount of members that it has. However in the wake of a recent survey which showed that 18% of farmers had let their Union membership lapse, the organisation is perhaps fighting for survival. Having recently built a lavish £20 million HQ in the heart of London’s West end, it immediately declared another move, this time away from London to an office in the Midlands. Such a move arguably reflects a cost-saving measure in an era of unprecedented falling support in the farming community.

A recent farming survey showed that 67% of farmers, and 71% of all young farmers, identified an urgent need to create a new representative farming body to replace the ailing NFU. FARM, whose soaring membership reflects this groundswell of opinion, argue that NFU decision-making emphasises Agribusiness over the livelihood of Agriculture. This is why, according to the words of the NFU’s Roger Ward himself, 17,000 farmers left the industry last year alone.

As the farmer and NFU activist Marie Skinner puts it, “Until the NFU tackles its own internal problems, it will not be able to offer effective leadership to a headless, worried industry and the next generation will continue to walk away from the land”.

Dr. Ho claims that most of the research departments in Britain’s top universities are now heavily reliant on private funding, which she says, may typically make up 80%-90% of a department’s annual budget. A recent survey for the Institute of Professional Managers carried out in public and recently privatised laboratories found that 1/3 of all scientists have been asked to change research findings to suit the customers preferred outcomes, whilst 10% had had pressure put on them to actually bend results in order to secure contracts.

Dr. Ho believes that all “scientific” evidence coming out in favour of GM food should be independently assessed to expose the vested interests of biotech industries in British University laboratories.

Biotechnological research is the scientific field most heavily invested in, with £1.9 billion ploughed into the “Genomix” research in 2000 – research carried out to help industry discover potentially lucrative new drugs. This industrialisation of the university sector is actively encouraged by the Science Minister Lord Sainsbury, who also happens to be a biotech investor. When asked of this forging trend he was quoted as saying, “it’s a dazzling record … reflecting a stunning change in the entrepreneurial attitudes of our universities”

Whilst delving into the secretive world of biological experimenting on animals, Dr. Ho was hounded out of her job, after 25 years teaching at the Open University, following pressure put on her department by Huntingdon Life Sciences. In an interview with Red Pepper, Dr. Ho reveals a shocking picture of the current state of scientific research in British universities: “For every whistle-blower punished by industry that reaches the press, there are ten more whose contracts are quietly terminated”.

Not only are the agendas of the departments now run for industry she claims, but furthermore the funding bodies are made up of industry members. The Biotechnology and Biological Research Council, or BBRSC, is a case in point. The council is responsible for the allocation of all postgraduate funding in the field of biotechnology, and also funds 98 universities.

Red Pepper can reveal that of the fifteen board members, the five whose details are openly known have strong links with GSK, AgroEvo UK, Dupont, Unilever, Nestle, Rhone Poulenc, Pfizer and Dyfed Seed, many of whom have been accused of human-rights and environmental abuses. Furthermore, the chairman of the board, Peter Doyle, is the former Chief-Executive of Astra-Zeneca, one of the biotechnology companies lobbying hard to allow for GM seed commercialisation in this country. Anyone wishing to use public money to research into possible drawbacks of GM are thus prevented from doing so through the vested interests of the grant awarding body.

Furthermore, a leaked document sent from an employee of a laboratory which had received a BBRSC grant, exposes a contract forcibly signed by all those receiving grants, openly forbidding any “involvement in political controversy on biotechnology sciences” which might mean publicised concern over GM food. Any such involvement would lead to dismissal, being sued for breach of contract or even facing a court injunction to stop any further comments being made public.

Attempts by unions representing scientists to change the secretive wording of this contract to allow for more transparency, have been actively dismissed by the pro-GM members in the Royal Society; a body with the necessary publicly-funded muscle to police the scientific world, but dependent nonetheless on millions of pounds worth of strings-attached contributions from companies such as GSK and Rhone-Poulenc, both of whom have massive financial interests in Biotechnology.

“It’s disastrous, turning taxpayers money into corporate medicine,” says Dr. Ho. “I’d love to just hide in my lab and do science, but we at ISIS feel we have to do something, the situation is so serious. People just don’t realise how important science is in dominating world policies. If governments are too stupid or too weak to fund independent research into the food we eat and the environment we live in, then we are lost.”

More information:

www.i-sis.org.uk

www.ngin.org.uk