Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Regulations 2025

Baroness Freeman of Steventon Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trees (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support these regulations; I do not regret them. The UK is a leader in these technologies, and exploiting and implementing them will be an integral part of developing our biosciences expertise to help drive economic growth in the UK. But much more than that, critically, they will help us feed not only ourselves in the UK but the world, in the face of a growing population, constantly emerging disease threats and environmental challenges.

I would just like to point out the rather obvious: the fruit, vegetables and crops we grow and consume now are very different from their natural progenitors and have been subject to genetic changes by humans over hundreds of years, through selective processes involving no knowledge of what other genes might be affected. We have been eating genetically modified food for years and years.

Historically, the world, and especially populations in some of the poorest countries of the world, benefited from the green revolution in the decades after the Second World War, when varieties of wheat and rice in particular were improved such that many people could be fed adequately in those countries. Again, that was achieved by traditional methods. But the modern techniques enable us to make changes extremely quickly, and with incredibly sustainable and environmentally friendly means, to benefit humankind by reducing parasiticides, chemicals, fertilisers and even water—and by reducing food waste. So I find it difficult to understand why the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and our colleagues in the Green Party oppose them.

I have confidence in our molecular biologists and our plant scientists—and these regulations. For these reasons, I support the Government strongly, but I urge them to press ahead with similar enabling regulations to permit precision-breeding technologies in animals. They offer, for example, the prospect of creating avian flu-resistant chickens, which would not only prevent disease in chickens but could reduce the possibility of spillover infections into humans of, for instance, the highly pathogenic avian influenza strain H5N1. Doing that has the potential to prevent the possible adaptation to human-to-human transmission. So I strongly support these regulations for plants, and I urge the Government to consider bringing similar enabling regulations for animals to this House as soon as possible.

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, my career has been in the communication of science and evidence, helping to give people the information that they need and want to make decisions. There have been 25 years of studies on the communication of genetic modification and all these techniques. Some of them were done by the FSA, which neatly summarises the decades of research, saying that consumers

“saw a range of risks and benefits to PB food but on balance consumers thought the benefits outweighed the risks if properly regulated … they trust the FSA to regulate PB food”—

but they

“wanted labelling to enable them to make choices at the point of purchase”.

The FSA says:

“The power to decide on the mandatory labelling of PBOs for non-safety related purposes in England sits with … Defra. FSA officials have shared results of the consumer research and public consultation with Defra”.


I am really concerned about the lack of labelling here, not because it is a safety issue but because going against what consumers want carries risks. Defra responded:

“Based on the scientific advice that the risk associated with precision bred plants is no greater than for traditionally bred counterparts, we do not consider that mandatory labelling focused on the breeding technology or process used is appropriate”.


I have heard those arguments echoed by noble Lords today already. But the problem with this is that a lot of people’s concerns about this technology are not safety based, and ignoring the fact that people have other concerns, which they feel are not being listened to, might create a public backlash to this technology.

Often, people feel that something will not be fair here. They are worried about this benefiting the big players and the rich over the smaller players or the poor in the world. Defra’s response, focusing only on food safety, does not even make sense because, as we have heard, labels on food are often about things that are not direct food safety. Labelling of country of origin is mandated, for example. This allows consumers to make decisions on things they want to decide on when they are buying things at the point of sale.

I worry that, if the Government continue on this path of not having mandatory labelling, organic producers, who cannot allow gene-edited material into their supply chains, will have to take the responsibility to do all that tracing and labelling of products themselves. It will be very difficult, as we all know and have already heard, to trace a product all the way from a register—a variety—right through the supply chain. So, if people are not able to do that work or if it will be very expensive, how is the organic labelling supposed to work and how are consumers supposed to make a choice?

If we dig down into the FSA’s material on labelling further, we find a paragraph that says that labelling

“is likely to add extra costs. Providing this additional verification and assurance for all PB food would add extra cost to the whole PB food market, making it less affordable, reducing the incentives for food businesses to innovate and bring new products to market”.

That is the sort of phrase—“incentives for food businesses”—that is likely to trigger the sentiment that we have already experienced around genetic modification, and around the fear that the Government are pandering to big multinational companies, allowing their profits to override concerns about the environment or small businesses such as small farms.

I have a positive solution here for the Government. Rather than making organic and small brands, usually SMEs, label their products as “GM free” or choose whatever label they want—thereby causing resentment among the public about the costs to small businesses and worries about the lack of transparency—it would be far better for gene-edited products to be clearly labelled with what modification has been made to them and why. The Royal Society mentioned this in its consultation response. For example, labels could say: “Genetically enhanced to contain more vitamin C”. This would give people an understanding of the potential benefits and would let them know, and reassure them, that things have been traced through. To respond to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, if something has been edited and it has shown stability through the generations, it does not matter how many generations later you are: that edited gene is present in that product—and it is there for a reason. This is why people are doing this work: we want these beneficial genes.

Giving people that understanding, through labelling, that it has been enhanced to do whatever it has been enhanced to do allows people to make an informed consumer choice, and it minimises the costs and places them fairly on the people doing the gene editing. I beg the Minister to reconsider on this issue. She should listen to people’s concerns; they are not irrational or misunderstanding science—it is about establishing trust and about your priorities and ensuring that they are the same as the public’s priorities. If you do not act in a trustworthy manner, you cannot expect people to trust you. Once you have lost trust, we know what happens: we have been there before on this issue.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, given my experience with polling, I wish to focus on one particular statement made by Defra which underpins this Statutory Instrument. In the de minimis impact assessment, it says that polling commissioned by Defra, from YouGov in 2022, found that

“over half (57%) of respondents thought the use of gene editing in crops/plants for food production was acceptable, 16% were undecided, while 27% thought the use was unacceptable”.

It is a little unfortunate that, as well as initially not having published the impact assessment online but only making it available on request, the department also initially seemed reluctant to share further details of that polling. As the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report on this noted:

“Defra has not published the survey”,


and that remained the case even after the committee asked for information about it.

As a result, I contacted the pollster directly and pointed out that, under its own industry regulation, it appeared to be required to publish the poll, which I am glad to say that it did—and to be fair I note that Defra has since added a link to the details of the poll to the impact assessment. But this sequence suggests an unfortunate reluctance to be as transparent as possible about the evidence being used for decision-making. Why should the details of a poll, paid for by the taxpayer and being used to justify legislation being put to Parliament, be obscured in that way?

Now that we have the details of the poll, they pose further questions. In the poll, a full 52% said that they had not even heard of this technology. Moreover, of the 48% who had heard of it, only 3% said they were “very well informed” about it. As that is 3% of the 48%, it means that overall only 1.5% said that they were very well informed about the topic that they were being asked to give their views on.

The specific question which Defra cited, whose wording we now know despite that earlier reluctance, is not an awful question, by any means, but its wording is problematic, given how Defra has chosen to use its results. The question wording provides positives about PBOs without providing any mention of possible drawbacks. There is an obvious and clear risk of skewing answers, if you ask a question on a topic about which only 1.5% say they are well informed and in that question provide only benefits and mention no possible drawbacks.

I hope, therefore, that the Minister will address both these points. First, why was there the initial reluctance to publish full details of the poll? Secondly, can I press the Minister on whether a question in a poll where only 1.5% of people say that they are well informed of the topic, and with wording that provides only positives for the policy, really provides the solid evidence that the impact assessment presents it as being?