George Paterson

Dr George Paterson is Director of the Scottish arm of the Food Standards Agency. At the first meeting of the FSA's board in Scotland, the topic of GM dominated the agenda. Dr Paterson was reported as saying, 'Openness, accessibility and transparency are our watchwords at FSA Scotland. They are vital if we are to rebuild public confidence in food safety.'

From 1996-1999 Paterson was director general of the food directorate within Health Canada, the government's health department. He has been linked to major food safety scandals in Canada in that period, which have led to accusations that he is in favour of genetically modified food and 'a friend of big business', and that his department's actions were marked by the very opposite of openness and transparency when he was leading it. (Report claims FSA boss 'is pro-GM')

The accusations are based, in particular, on an unpublished 35-page expert report written by John Verrall, a UK-based pharmaceutical chemist and researcher with the Food Ethics Council, an independent organisation which works to improve ethical standards in food and agriculture.

The report details Paterson's role within Health Canada and alleges he was involved in fast tracking approval of GM foods for Monsanto. An article published in 1999 in the Ottawa Citizen identified Paterson as the author of a leaked memo describing a private deal which resulted in rapid approval for two new kinds of GM potatoes made by Monsanto. Until the deal was negotiated, the potatoes had been held up in the regulatory system because Monsanto refused to provide key scientific information to regulators assessing the products' health and environmental effects, the memo shows. Michele Brill-Edwards, a former Health Canada drug regulator said of the Paterson memo,'What you're seeing is a high-level example of a very dirty game that practically nobody knows about. These kinds of meetings go on all the time and it's almost never captured because people are careful not to let this kind of thing be known.'

Paterson's directorate is also alleged to have been involved in the overriding of Canadian government scientists' health warnings on Monsanto's GM Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH or rBST), which is banned in Europe. At Canadian Senate hearings, Health Canada scientists testified repeatedly of the enormous pressure on them from Paterson's directorate to approve rBGH, and other drugs of questionable safety.

Verrall argues in his report that it is wrong to appoint Paterson as the director of the FSA in Scotland. 'There must surely be questions regarding the suitability, acceptability and timeliness of this appointment. It does nothing for the credibility of an organisation, one of whose prime functions was said to be the restoration of public confidence.'

Website http://www.food.gov.uk/scotland/