Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Lord Jopling Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 21st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jopling (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by drawing attention to my farming interest in the register. Like others who have spoken, my first comment is to welcome the Bill. I agreed enormously with the noble Lord, Lord Winston, when he said—I have put it into my own words—that we are doing what we should have done years ago. More years have passed than I am prepared to admit since I graduated in agricultural sciences. The teaching of genetics then, which had of course moved on some way from Gregor Mendel, could be described as the foothills of the science, practice and application of genetics compared with the towering peaks of genetic knowledge and application today.

Mercifully, however, I have had a number of refreshers in genetics since those days—the first was in the 1980s, when I was Minister of Agriculture. Noble Lords will remember that, in those days, the European Commission was faced with horrific surpluses of almost every agricultural product, which we could neither eat at home nor sell abroad. The Commission’s Luddite reaction was to discourage any new scientific procedures which could make those surplus mountains and lakes even larger. It did its best to discourage developments, particularly entry into the food chain of products created by genetic modification or by things such as hormone implants in animals to promote growth. On the latter, it even suppressed scientific assessments which it had commissioned itself because those studies could see no danger in proceeding. So, in those days, little progress was made in applying the new technology and the potential benefit from the emerging techniques of genetic modification. Somebody once said—I am not quite sure where—that it has become technically possible, with the knowledge of applying genetic techniques, to cross an elephant with an oak tree; I will come back to that in a minute. In the 1980s, the Commission’s actions very much stifled the fruits of science.

I had a further refresher in 1998 and 1999—shortly after I first became a Member of your Lordships’ House—when I was a member of the European Communities Sub-Committee D under the most distinguished chairmanship of the late Lord Reay. We produced a report entitled EC Regulation of Genetic Modification in Agriculture. Having studied the Commission’s stranglehold on the progress in this area, we concluded in paragraph 203, the final conclusion of the report:

“GMOs need to be regulated, at least until our knowledge develops further, but it would be extremely damaging if Europe’s access to this technology was subjected to inappropriate impediments”.


We are now discussing this welcome Bill, which introduces these necessary regulations to ensure that foodstuffs which have been altered through genetic techniques are safe.

However, at that time, we discovered that, in spite of the Commission’s Luddite attitudes, large quantities of genetically modified soya beans, maize and tomato pulp were already being imported into the European Community, particularly from the United States and other places where regulations could be described only as lax. Indeed, in our Select Committee report published in 1999, we said in paragraph 15:

“The enzyme Chymosin is identical to rennet and is produced by genetically modified yeasts or bacteria. It was introduced in commercial cheese-making in 1991 and is now used to manufacture 90 per cent. of hard cheeses”—


so much for the Commission’s restrictions back then.

The Bill is a worthy step in ensuring that the introduction of gene editing and other techniques will happen only with proper safeguards, but I have some concerns about the Bill. We are told that it covers genetic changes that could have occurred naturally or through traditional breeding methods. This clearly rules out our elephant and oak tree liaison, which I referred to earlier, but I can foresee some prolonged arguments as to whether the traditional processes or the natural transformations conditions apply. I think the noble Lord, Lord Winston, again, had the same anxiety as I have. So, will the Minister expand a little on the appeals procedure, because I can imagine many, many appeals about whether those conditions within the Bill are followed? For instance, modern wheats are created from mutations years ago, long before genetics was dreamed of—unlikely mutations, in those cases—which I can see could be the basis for arguments as to whether new products today are within the rulings of the Bill.

Finally, I recall a conversation I had in the early 1980s with Lord Rothschild, the former chairman of the Agricultural Research Council. He was wildly enthusiastic about the possibilities of using genetic techniques to attach to wheat plants the capacity of legumes—peas, beans and clovers, in this case—to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere, thus providing nutrients for the wheat. On one hand, it would have dramatically increased wheat yields in exceptionally poorer land and would have had a massive effect on relieving poverty and hunger in less developed countries. On the other hand, it would also have reduced the demand for fertilisers and similar chemicals. I know that this particular research, which was entered into enthusiastically all those years ago, was too complicated to be fully developed and has slowed down, although I understand it still continues. I quote it as an example of a development that would or could be hugely beneficial to mankind.

I remember a similar development when I was Minister of Agriculture. Using public money, I bought—I cannot remember how many—perhaps about 10 Chinese pigs, much to the hysterical amusement of the Chinese Minister of Agriculture, because the department’s scientists knew that those pigs had an in-built capacity for very large litter sizes and they wanted to see if they could extract the gene and implant it into the traditional European pigs, which would have made them very much more productive. My point about this is that it seems a pity that the Bill gives no encouragement to these sorts of benefits because of the limits of the Bill, especially in Clause 1. Those rather glamorous developments, if I can put it that way, remain impossibilities. Will the Minister please comment on these sorts of possibilities and say some encouraging words about possible further steps in the future to embrace the influences for good that could lie ahead through much wider genetic modifications than those rather limited ones that appear in the Bill?