Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Debate between Lord Winston and Lord Cameron of Dillington

Committee stage
Monday 12th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 9 is in my name. I will be very brief about that, but I agree that we should be extremely cautious generally about animals at this stage. There is a lot of concern. From the example of dealing with pigs in a genome environment, I know that they are very different from some of the other mammals that we have been experimenting with. We may come to that issue later on when it comes to licensing.

With regard to Amendment 9, there is a strong case as well for limiting this to farm animals, if we go ahead at all—and if we do I would like to see equines excluded, for pretty obvious reasons. Some time ago, when I was working with an anaesthetist who was looking at equine metabolism, it was amazing how suspiciously the horse-breeding industry looked at our work—so much so that we could not share our data on their metabolism. It was very clear that we would have great difficulty with the restrictions that are proposed on that industry.

With regard to the great apes, it would be wrong to consider them in the same way as other mammals. It seems to me that these sapient creatures are so close to humans that they ought not to be included in the Bill. There are restrictions, of course, on the use of rhesus monkeys in research. I have worked with rhesus monkeys, not in Britain but in the United States. As a research worker, I always found that extremely distressing because I saw their response to even just a visit from us, when they knew we were going to do something which they thought would be unpleasant. I feel strongly that there has to be a very strong case for modifying sapient creatures, perhaps even to make them less sapient—so I propose Amendment 9 on that basis.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, I realise that these are mostly probing amendments and, as ever, we await the Minister’s remarks with bated breath. But I cannot let the proposal to exclude all animals pass without comment because, like my noble friend Lord Trees, I believe that if we were to exclude all animals from the Bill, it would be an opportunity wasted to enable us to remove a lot of suffering on their behalf. My noble friend and I both mentioned the disease PRRS in pigs at Second Reading. It is a devastating disease for any herd, outdoors or indoors, organic or whatever. As a farmer, you just have to cull drastically to eliminate as much suffering as possible, and killing your herd is not a very pleasant thing to have to do. Breeding resistance to the disease is therefore a much more humane approach.

One of the great positives of the Bill is that if you alter the genes of one animal, say, to make them resistant to a particular disease, and succeed in making this a hereditary and stable characteristic—not always a given—you can get huge benefits for animals and even humans, because you will be taking more antibiotics out of our environment. Breeding resistance into future generations is so much more sensible than the ongoing use of antibiotics, medicines and even vaccines as a way to help animals live pain-free and disease-free lives.

The key to making the Bill work fairly and humanely for animals is to ensure that we continue to have the strictest monitoring and regulation every step of the way: in the laboratory and on the farm, and for plants and particularly with animals. We will obviously come to the tightening of some of these regulations later in our deliberations.

On the companion animal debate, I fear I disagree with my noble friend Lord Krebs, who I very rarely disagree with. I realise that they seem to present a slightly more unregulated environment than that of farm animals; people keeping pets are not subject to the strict regulations that exist on our farms—regulations that are, in theory, enforced by a variety of inspectors, not least those who come from the supermarkets, on which the farmers depend for their livelihoods. However, we are not debating how the pets are being kept: it is the ability of breeders to get the relevant licence and approval from the Home Office, and now from the welfare advisory body. If we had some form of guarantee that the welfare advisory body will have a remit—nay, a duty—to investigate in the home and on the farm the future quality of life of any relevant animal and its progeny, along the lines of my later amendments, I do not see it as necessary to exclude companion animals in total from this Bill.