Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Second sitting)

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Jo Churchill]

Right—noted.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

Q I start by thanking you and your colleagues for your excellent evidence, some of it submitted to the consultation. It has certainly informed a lot of our thinking, although it also raised a lot of questions. In your introductions, you restated what was essentially in the evidence, which is that there is a problematic set of definitions and this would not necessarily have been the way that you would have gone.

I want to explore something slightly different: the role of advisory bodies. You began to touch on that in your last answer. The Bill at the moment is very thin on what the advisory bodies are there to do. In some of your written evidence, both your organisations suggested that the different bodies should have some kind of remit to look at the wider public good. Could you say a little bit about that? I have been taken by the example of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, or some aspects of the work that it does.

Professor Lovell-Badge: I have been very much involved in the HFEA public engagement exercises. When you are considering a broad area, or potential uses and outcomes, it is really important to have proper public engagement, including democracy, dialogue, or however you want to refer to it, where you really get to understand what the public will think about a topic.

When it comes to assessing technical aspects, it will be challenging. It is fine to have a lay member on a panel, but I do not know whether consulting the public about really detailed, technical issues might be challenging. It depends on what the advisory committee’s role is and whether it is to look more broadly at potential uses and outcomes or to focus on the specific techniques that are being used.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q Let me press you on that slightly. In terms of some of the animal welfare issues, it is pretty clear that some of the things that could be done could be designed to make animals more resistant to heat or more liable to be able to survive certain conditions. That does not seem to us a good use of this technology. It is not entirely clear to me on what grounds the advisory bodies would make decisions. If it is just left to a market-driven system, you could argue that, provided it produces a better return, that is good enough, but the ethical issues would be wider than that.

Professor Lovell-Badge: This is another point. I was a bit confused because there is quite a lot of emphasis in the Bill on animal welfare and how they would have a role to play in that. If you are doing an experiment with an animal, you have to have Home Office approval. Animal welfare is a top priority. Many of the things that you might want to do would already be weeded out at that stage. If you wanted to make an animal that felt no pain, for example, you might just about be able to get away with justifying that for research purposes, but certainly not for developing any product.

The regulations about welfare are already there. Sure, it is important to have some input into your advisory committee that says, “This has to be looked at. Have they thought about all the consequences of what they are doing?” Exactly how you would achieve that under the Bill, I am not certain.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q There is now a new player in town: the animal sentience committee, which is not established yet. How would you see the interplay with that, given what you have just said?

Professor Lovell-Badge: I know little about that.

Alessandro Coatti: It is an interesting new player, welcomed by many parties across the House. It looks like it will be an expert committee. Mostly the members will be people with relevant expertise in veterinary sciences, potentially neuroscience, so it would not be an arena for a public dialogue, but that is not to say that they cannot commission it and then take recommendations on board. In my view, they could play a role, but it would be hard. The new animal welfare committee that would overlook the authorisations in the Bill would look at a notifier that said, “We want to do this on an animal, but we do not foresee any health or welfare implications for it.” That committee would focus very much on the health and welfare of the single individual animal, but it is not clear to me whether it would consider higher-level questions such as, “What does it mean for the production of that livestock, the density, the husbandry and so on?”

Of course, the existing DEFRA Animal Welfare and Animal Sentience Committees could be brought in. You could say, “We have a new line of pigs that are resistant to this disease. On paper, it looks very good, because we made a very small, tailored change to a part of it, not a rough deletion of an entire gene. The animals under research and development look fine in contained circumstances and they are well. Would you be happy for us to license them to go on to a breeding trial to expand the number of animals from the 20 in the research study to 200, and to map whether there are any health and welfare impacts on a bigger number of animals?” Those committees could advise the new animal welfare committee on that matter.

Following on from that, the bigger question is: “What do we want for UK farming, agriculture and so on?” That is one of those pillar questions that bigger Government policy, not the Bill, will resolve.

Professor Lovell-Badge: My colleague makes a very good point. If you take things out into the field, the conditions are different from lab conditions in which you originally generated the animals. If you introduce another breeding programme, or a different genetic background, the consequences of what you have done could change. It is the same with traditional breeding, but on all those things, there needs to be long-term feedback. As you would have with humans in clinical trials, you get a phase 3 clinical trial in which you get a lot of people feeding back information—much more than in a phase 2 trial—and then there is always post-market reporting whereby any adverse effects are notified over the years.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q That is a really important point. I may be wrong, but I do not see anything in the Bill enabling that.

Professor Lovell-Badge: Nor do I.

Alessandro Coatti: Under clause 11, when a marketing notice is given in relation to a precision bred animal, the Secretary of State reserves the right to get information from the notifier, over a specified period of time, about the health and welfare of the animal, so that is already covered in the Bill.

Professor Lovell-Badge: But how you do that is not clear.

Alessandro Coatti: No, and a lot will depend on very good guidance from DEFRA or ACRE about how to do that. But that power is in the Bill, at least.

Again, the need for post-marketing monitoring comes down to the trade that you are introducing, not whether you use a technique. It will be important for whoever advises the Secretary of State to be able to tell them, “This change warrants longer-term monitoring, but this other one does not, because we have seen it in the species over many years. This is just a better way of doing it, and it will not dramatically alter what we already know about the trait.”

Professor Lovell-Badge: Remember, many genes have effects in multiple tissues, so you may be focused on changing something—modifying CCR5 for HIV resistance, for example—but not realise that it may also be active and play some role in the brain. That is a clear example of where you may have an issue.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

Q The Regulatory Policy Committee brought out a report just a few days ago that concludes that the Government have not made a convincing business case for the deregulation of precision bred organisms in the food system, and it suggests that more narrative around

“competition, innovation, consumer and environmental impacts”

should be included in the Bill. Would you agree that there is insufficient detail on that in the Bill currently?

Professor Lovell-Badge: I think I would agree it is insufficient. You have to factor in everything: the environment, farming practice—how whatever you are doing, whether it is with plant or animal, is going to fit in with or change farming practices. I think there needs to be a lot more thought about those issues.

Alessandro Coatti: I am not entirely sure I agree. Could you tell me again—those people said that the Government have not made a case for deregulation of these organisms?

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[The Chair]

I remind people that we have until 3.15 pm for this session. A couple of Members have caught my eye. I will start with Daniel Zeichner.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q Thank you, Ms McVey. Bill, I was very taken with what you were saying about your concerns about the intellectual property rights associated with some of this issue. I got the sense that you do not feel that the Bill as it stands answers those questions. What would you like to see? What would give the protections that would reassure you on these issues?

William Angus: At the moment, what I would like to see is no change to the status quo. Let us take this as an example: company A produces a variety and he introduces a trait into that variety. In two years’ time, once that variety has been added to the UK national list, another breeder can use that trait. That is the freedom to operate. It is really important that that is sustained and that people are not locked out of new developments. What may happen—this is an area I feel quite uncomfortable with—is that we may start to see larger organisations move the goalposts in terms of trying to stop other breeders from using genetic resources that have been developed.

Now, I am quite happy—here, we develop our own genetic resources and we give those away freely, to anybody. If anybody on the Committee would like some wheat, I will send them some genetics, no problem at all. That is freedom to operate. That is really all that I would look for—that we do not change the current status so that people think that, somehow, a naturally developed product or a GE product is any different, and that there is still that freedom to operate.

Can I make one comment on Johnathan and Nigel’s remarks? I have sat on a number of Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council committees. I chaired the horticulture and potato initiative and so on. I am not saying this because they are here, but the UK is absolutely blessed with the best public research on wheat around the world. They are absolutely right to make the point about the fact that this is not developed as well as it could be, primarily because the promotion system is based on paper publications. It is lovely to hear both of these guys talking about taking stuff to the market. That would be another comment that I would make. It is great to hear.

Going back to your question, let us be careful that there are mechanisms in place to protect this freedom of exchange of germplasm that happens not just in the UK but globally. It is really important that we do that. There have been steps in America to patent genes. We really must not go down that route. In my opinion, it will stifle innovation and it would put the control of our food supplies in the hands of large multinationals, which I would be very concerned about.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q To be clear, this follows on from the notion that these could have occurred naturally. They should be treated in that way, rather than being put in a special category.

William Angus: Yes. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot say it occurs naturally and then I am going to change it and now it is different. I agree.

It is very difficult when I come from the environment I do—my views tend to be slightly different from those who come from large multinational companies—but I think it is a really important point, that we protect innovation from big companies and so on, but that we also protect the right of individuals to start up their own businesses. The way I look on it is, you know, Richard Branson started Virgin Atlantic—he was allowed to do that. One man started with one aeroplane, and off he went; brilliant, great, good for him. It would be sad if people like that or companies such as easyJet were excluded from the market because someone said, “This is an aeroplane, and you’re not allowed to fly it.” I would like to reiterate that we need that protection in there.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q Thank you, that’s helpful. May I turn to the two professors? On innovation in general, in essence, the argument is that innovation will happen because obstacles are being removed. Is that enough to foster the kind of innovation that you would hope to see, based on your passion and excitement for this technology?

Professor Napier: I think it was mentioned earlier that with innovation, it probably needs to be developed as a public-private partnership, which sort of implies that there needs to be a market pull. Using the term “market” can be slightly perturbing because, in reality, the drivers for what we want to see translated are much bigger than the economics. They are things like global climate change, food security and all the global pandemics associated with malnutrition and overconsumption. Those are the challenges enshrined in sustainable development goals and things like that. Those are the things that we should be occupying ourselves with. We need to use everything we can to try to fix those challenges. Rothamsted and other places like that—in fact, everybody—should be working towards those goals and overcoming those challenges.

Listening to what Bill said about IP, I spend an enormous amount of time thinking about IP because it is an area that I have to think about a lot. The beauty about the UK is that we have a really strong research use exemption, which allows us to operate in a way that is not encumbered, at least at the research level, by IP. We are in a really good place. I think the bigger barrier to innovation is what I have already mentioned: it is not IP but the cost of regulatory approval. That is why I am so worried that in new legislation, if we start building in layers of costs associated with more regulation, we are just replicating what we had previously under the EU regulation. I think that would be an enormous missed opportunity if we go down that road. That is my personal view.

[Deidre Brock]

Q I want to go back to Mr Angus’s comments about ownership or the licensing of genes and his concern about that. How would you address that, as people involved in this area? What measures should be taken? Clearly, people are concerned about the patenting of crops.

Professor Napier: You cannot patent a gene. There was a case in the US that made it quite clear that you cannot hold a patent on a gene. That legal precedent is quite clear, from the famous case of Myriad. I am not too worried about that. In reality, it is analogous to what you see in the pharmaceutical sector and relates exactly to your point about understanding the drivers for innovation. You need to couple it with economics.

All these things are moving parts, which you need to make the whole thing work. To pull it forward, you need to have an economic case and some form of protecting your invention—patents are a good way of doing that. The example I always give is that my mobile phone probably has 2,000 patents-worth of components in. Nobody gets upset about that. It is about understanding how you can best use this technology. I also do not want to sound like some sort of gung-ho free marketeer, because I am absolutely not. I work in a Government-supported institute. I do not work in the private sector. I probably want the best of both worlds.

Professor Halford: As public sector scientists, at times in our careers we have been told we should be patenting everything, and at times in our careers we have said, “Well, it's unethical to be patenting this stuff.” I think we have a pretty robust patents system. You cannot patent discoveries of genes; you have to patent an invention. That seems to have worked for mobile phones and it works with pharmaceuticals, many of which are biologicals. I do not see why it cannot work in crop high technology.

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[Jo Churchill]

Right, okay. I am not sure that I entirely understand why you feel it would be any different with GE, which is a completely different technique—with all due respect—from GM. If I could tease out that animal welfare point, you are predicating your argument on the idea that everything is detrimental on a welfare front. Surely the eradication of avian flu—particularly as we have had the challenge in the last year—would be beneficial to free-range birds as well. I am keen that the rest of the Committee has its chance to contribute, though.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q Good afternoon and welcome. I am glad that you raised the impact assessment because there is a lot of interesting stuff there. Some of it is a touch surprising, which we will probably explore in more detail when we go through the Bill line by line. You already touched on some of this, but what are the threats from these developments for your sector? What would you like to see in the Bill to deal with those challenges, as you see them?

Roger Kerr: From an organic regulatory basis, as Chris has already indicated, GE is still defined as GM. We need to be much clearer about what GE is being defined as, and we still do not have that clarity. As things stand, it is not allowed within the organic regulation, so the risk is where there is a lack of co-existence measures in place, which means that organic crops are contaminated. Organic consumers make these purchasing decisions because they believe they are avoiding GM, and that is a right they should have.

By not having robust co-existence measures in place, we are obviously putting our consumers at risk, because they are purchasing organic products on the basis that they do not believe they are consuming GM. It is a personal choice—I am not saying that you should not—and the organic sector is not saying per se that we should not have genetic editing. What we are saying is that it is incompatible with organic. Organic is out there, and there is a market for it, as Steve has clearly stated. There is a significant opportunity, both domestically and internationally, for the UK organic sector.

We should protect the organic sector, and there should be some visibility in terms of GE—where it is being grown, what is being grown and what the potential risks associated with that are for the organic sector—so we can ensure that the organic sector remains free from GM or GE, as it is at the moment. There is concern that if we are looking to provide consumers with the choice of having GE or not, we will end up with quite a significant cost within the supply chain to ensure co-existence, in terms of space and time, between GM and non-GM. This is not organic per se; it is just GM and non-GM. We will then have to have extra storage, more vehicle movements and a much higher level of testing. There are concerns that, without real clarity about what is going on and where the potential points of contamination arise, a significant cost will be borne by the food sector, which is already under significant pressure.

Joanna Lewis: I understand that you are addressing us as the organic industry and the organic sector, but I just want to reiterate that the Soil Association is a charity of 70 years’ standing that represents all citizens, farmers, growers and scientists who want to see a mainstream transition to agroecological farming and regenerative farming for climate, nature and health.

The response to the consultation on the Bill—85% of people and businesses were opposed—reflects a deeper unease not just about the safety issues and technicalities around the distinction between gene editing and GMOs. That is what I was trying to bring through with reference to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics’s public dialogue. It is really important to emphasise the very legitimate public concerns about the fact that breeding as a whole—plant and animal breeding—has been on an unhelpful trajectory that is not up to the challenge of the Government’s goals on sustainable farming transition. We therefore need to ensure that we are not accelerating that trend through carte blanche deregulation.

There is an opportunity to put good governance at the heart of this Bill, set that public interest test, and ensure full supply chain traceability, transparency and labelling for citizens who want and deserve the right to choose whether this is the solution for them. I would not want it narrowed down to saying we are representing an economic sector. This is a broader movement, and it is very much one for mainstream transition.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q How would you achieve that public interest test?

Joanna Lewis: I would really recommend that you look to Norway’s gene technology Act. I have not gone through it line by line, but it feels like a valuable precedent from a country that also sits outside the European Union and is looking at what governance can apply—to make sure we are not just presupposing the benefits. Commercial drivers are not given free rein, and if there is to be a relaxation of regulation, you can do it with the confidence that it is going in the direction of supporting more sustainable farming. I believe the test that it set is that something is of community benefit and supports sustainable development. I do not know whether that is fully adequate, but it is a precedent that is out there and merits some consideration.

[Deidre Brock]

Q Clause 3 sets out the conditions under which a person can release a precision bred organism in England. Do you think the measures within that are sufficient? Probably not. I would be interested to hear where you think they might be strengthened.

Christopher Atkinson: You are right in supposing that we feel the measures are insufficient. We need a high degree of traceability and the ability for organic producers in particular to understand where crops are being grown and the risk of contamination.

Roger Kerr: The other aspect is that, as we have heard from previous speakers, there is not going to be a significant amount of investment in producing this material unless there is sufficient visibility over where it is, because of the likelihood that it will disappear into the food system and the businesses that have developed the technology will not be able to recover the costs. There is an issue in understanding the full and public visibility over where these crops are being grown, who is growing them and where they are going, so that there is the opportunity to see where that product has gone, so that people can recover their investment.

Steven Jacobs: The Bill says that the organism is

“a marketable precision bred organism”

and

“the qualifying progeny of a marketable precision bred organism”.

One of the issues is what will happen if there are—and we are assuming there will be—many precision bred events put into one product, whether that is livestock or crops. In crops, for instance, you can have stacked traits. The issue is around that crop being bred with something else and some of those traits being passed over, perhaps unknowingly.

We have seen incidents where herbicide resistance has gone out into the wilder environment and that has caused problems. For instance, there was a case on the Swiss-Italian border where herbicide-resistant oilseed rape that was not grown in Switzerland was found on the railway. It had leaked out of the railway carriages. That is a problem because they spray herbicide to keep the railway sidings—all the ballast—stabilised. Now, they have a situation where there is a herbicide-resistant weed in a location that would normally be sprayed in order to keep the railway safe. There are incidents where one would need to see some measure of traceability in order to evaluate. It is not just our need; I would suggest that there is a public and commercial need.

Roger Kerr: On livestock, take a genetically edited bull, for argument’s sake—I have picked cows because I like cows. He will have sired innumerable daughters that will go on to be crossed back. They may be crossed back with a non-GE sire. At what point do they become non-GE? Obviously, going back through their parentage, there will be GE material in there. From our point of view—from an organic standpoint—the question is: at what point is it no longer a genetically edited animal, if its forebears were genetically edited? There is a lot of concern around how we manage this issue, how those things are defined and who, ultimately, owns the genetic material within that animal, albeit it is the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of something. There are concerns there.

Joanna Lewis: It also feels that the solution in terms of implementing supply chain transparency, traceability and labelling is eminently achievable. It does not feel like a big barrier to bring that into the scope of the Bill in order to address those concerns and allow the legitimate needs of citizens who reserve the right to choose to reject this technology, and to preserve the integrity of organic systems. We are obviously at a point in time where the industry is buzzing with big data supply chain solutions and wanting a whole new resurgence in food labelling to show the citizen everything about the provenance, origin and production practices of their food. It should not be a big barrier to this Bill’s intent to include that requirement for full supply chain transparency and labelling.

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[Jo Churchill]

Q When you are doing this research, you are bound by regulatory frameworks and have to keep the safety of the product. How do you, as leaders in science, challenge yourselves to make sure that the products that end up on our shelves—albeit that they have to go through FSA approval and so on—are bred for safety, and how we and the consumers assure ourselves of that?

Professor Oldroyd: There are currently very tight restrictions on validating the health and safety of GM products. For products produced by conventional breeding, we also have tests with regards to their performance in the environment, their performance relative to other varieties and their health. We have a robust regulatory framework in place that addresses the safety of the consumer, and it has served us well over many decades. I cannot think of an example where we can say, “Okay, this line has caused genuine risk to human health,” and that is because of the regulatory framework that exists.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q Good afternoon and a warm welcome to you. May I say how much I enjoyed visiting your splendid new offices a few months ago to meet your new director?

My questions are about public confidence. We know that this has been a vexed debate over many years. There is fantastic science being done in Cambridge, but it often strikes me that the wider public have very little idea about it; that is hardly a unique issue there. Do you think there are sufficient measures in the Bill to secure the public confidence that is needed? If not, what extra could be put in to secure that?

Dr Harrison: The key point is proportionality. In all the preamble to the Bill, it is suggested that there is a proportionate response to how the technology is regulated. What we must never forget about gene editing and the scope of the types of changes that can be introduced is that they are indistinguishable from nature, so fundamentally we are not doing anything that could not happen or arise through natural processes.

The level and proportionality of the regulation of, and the transparency of, those products is important, and it is important that the public are aware, which I suppose is why there are systems in the Bill to register intent to put into the existing system gene edited products, but I do not think we need to stretch much beyond that. We have, as Bill Angus said, very well established regulatory frameworks in which to evaluate the performance of crops. We have the DUS system—distinctiveness, uniformity and stability—and we have the value for cultivatable use system. They have shown over many years that when varieties are put on the market, they are safe. The legislation that exists beyond that gives any country the right, if they find a problem with a variety, to remove that from what is the common catalogue in the EU, or, in our case, from our national list. As long as the proportionality is adhered to, the Bill is appropriate.

Professor Oldroyd: There are a lot of studies that have looked at the general public’s position on biotechnology. There are really only a few at either extreme—who absolutely support it outright or who are very scared of it. Most of the general public are looking to people like me—to scientists—and to the regulatory framework to define what is safe to consume.

Within precision breeding, as is intrinsic to the Bill, is the fact that these are events that could happen by exactly the same natural diversity and so already could be introduced, theoretically, through a conventional breeding process. One of the issues is that some—in particular, those on the previous panel—have taken as a presumption that anything that is biotechnology is inherently dangerous, and that is not correct. It is not correct to say that just because it is being developed by this mechanism there is an inherent danger in that approach. That is the erroneous position to take when comparing with conventional breeding.

We use many varieties that have been generated by mutagenesis breeding, by double haploid production. These are conventional breeding approaches. There is very little about gene editing that is different from that in the end product; it is just how you get to that event.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q Where do you stand on the labelling issues? What kind of labelling do you think would be appropriate, given the advice from the Food Standards Agency?

Dr Harrison: My personal view is that I do not think there is any scientific rationale to have additional labelling criteria for gene-edited products, because they are fundamentally indistinguishable from nature. There is a sort of logical incoherence in saying, “Well, they are indistinguishable in nature, yet we must discriminate and show that they are different.” I think there is transparency in the system because there is a register. When farmers choose to grow varieties or there is a protected chain of production to discriminate one set of things from another, people are growing varieties—it is not magicked out of thin air. When people are planting, they will know whether it is a gene-edited variety or not. That is the point at which the choice can be made. I do not think there is any scientific rationale for then extending that labelling requirement to the post-marketing of products.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q What do you think the purpose of the registers are, in that case?

Dr Harrison: Everybody has said, and many panels have shown, that there is a need, when you are bringing a new technology into the market, to have an additional level of transparency in order to inspire public confidence. I think the question is what level of balance you need for public confidence. I think that the registers are there in order to say, “This is a product that has been produced with this technology,” and there is therefore then the ability for people to choose it, should they want to. That is what I see them being there for—to give people freedom of choice.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q There seems to be a slight inconsistency to me, though.

Dr Harrison: That is why I was saying that, at the time of planting, people can choose. The supply chain fits around that decision, at that point, much as it does with other production systems. To distinguish a gene-edited product on the basis that it is somehow different from a conventionally bred product is the thing that I am saying is a bit logically incoherent.

Professor Oldroyd: If I may add to that, the Bill itself states that only those that are considered to be equivalent to something that could be achieved by natural transformation are included under the Bill. So by definition we are saying that this product could be achieved by more conventional methods. Therefore, it is illogical to separate it out at some later stage and say, “This product is different”, when intrinsic to the Bill is the fact that it is not different. That is the only way it can be taken forward.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Which begs the question of why you had to register. However, I think we could probably go round in circles on this. Chair, I am quite happy for us to move on to other questioners.

[Deidre Brock]

Q Professor Oldroyd, you mentioned tight restrictions on validating the safety of gene-edited organisms. I just wondered whether it is possible to use field trials to assess sufficiently whether there are major impacts, or even minor impacts, on local ecologies once the crops are grown at a commercial scale. How do you take that into account?

Professor Oldroyd: Let me describe how we get to the point. For instance, I have some gene-edited material out in the field right now and we measure everything we can possibly measure in that material, from its effect. These are affecting plant microbial interactions, so we are particularly looking, for instance, at what is happening in the soil. We have the wild type and we have the gene-edited line, so we can precisely compare, to understand any differences in the local environment caused by the gene-edited type or the wild type. That is intrinsic to the research programme and we have to do those field trials before anything even gets close to commercialisation.

Therefore, intrinsic to working with this material is that we are already putting it out in the field. If I then hand it to breeder, they will then be doing breeding in their lines with that material and also doing extensive field trials, testing many factors, according to their performance relative to other lines. Ultimately, if it gets released as a variety, then NIAB, under the jurisdiction from the Government, tests and compares those lines relative to other lines on their performance in the field.

So there are many points along this track where we are actually testing the performance—as a researcher myself; as a breeding company; and then as NIAB, creating the recommended list. There are multiple factors all along the way that are already intrinsic to the process.

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[The Chair]

May I jump in here? We have about four and a half minutes left, and Daniel Zeichner wants to ask a question as well.

Professor Oldroyd: A lot of eyes are focused on this country at the moment, with regard to how we approach this. We have to recognise that we influence quite a bit. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa are absolutely looking to Europe, to the UK, for leadership on this. Our position will influence internationally how these technologies are legislated for. Certainly, we have a lot. I am excited about the potential to drive up food production for smallholders, as well as the sustainability of farming practices here in the UK. The opportunities are immense. Definitely, having this, the ability to use gene editing, will facilitate that delivery both to smallholder farmers and to UK farmers.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is definitely paying attention to what is happening here in the UK. With regard to additional investment, this Bill opens up opportunities for the UK. We are already a leader—we really are a leader in agricultural research—and I think it will position us even more greatly to be spearheading the impact of all that agricultural research.

Dr Harrison: I, too, see a big opportunity for the UK not only to lead, but to garner additional investment. At NIAB, where we operate in both the private and public sectors, we have seen on both sides a big increase in the attention given to the services we offer to industry and academia for crop transformation and gene editing. I definitely think there is an opportunity here. In the kind of ecosystems that you see around major university cities such as Cambridge, there are a lot of start-ups that are very much trying to bridge the gap between the need to use crop science to transform food and farming to be sustainable, and the use of new technologies. A definite opportunity.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q You made a powerful case for the development of SMEs, although you are publicly funded, and for allowing that space to develop for the public good—but it is a very Cambridge-y conversation, in the sense that we know that the Cambridge experience is often that small start-ups get bought up and are then used for other purposes. Would it not further the cause that you are promoting to have a public good test somewhere in this process to enable that to be done for the public good, rather than to be potentially lost down the line?

Dr Harrison: Personally, I would say that, and not just for this Bill and gene editing. If one wants a public good test, one should apply it to everything in terms of crop varieties, and not single out gene edited varieties as a unique case. I return to my comments on looking at the listing system and making sure that, again, it is proportionate. Breeders have to spend a lot of money bringing varieties to market, so if there was public good funding coming from Government, it should be to support breeders in developing those varieties that have enhanced public good traits. You should look at it in the round.

Professor Oldroyd: I think it would be very hard to define what is not a public good. Production is for the public good. We have to have production. Production tends to be where the private sector focuses—it is total productivity—but it has raised productivity across the past century. That has certainly given it a competitive edge as individual industries, but it has meant that we have kept our production up with the growing population and the growing demand. That is public good. I would find it very hard to differentiate what is public good from what is not public good when trying to manage such legislation.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I think we might find some examples, but that is for another day.

[The Chair]

That draws us neatly to the end of the time allocated for this session. A big thank you to Dr Richard Harrison and Professor Giles Oldroyd.

Examination of Witness

Sam Brooke gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jo Churchill]

Q One final question from me before I hand over: what would you not want to see in this Bill?

Sam Brooke: As a whole, the BSPB is incredibly supportive of the Bill and what it is trying to achieve. Our main concern would be around clause 3 and a risk assessment around food and feed. All the scientific evidence would show that there is no greater risk in using these technologies than in using what we currently are in conventional or traditional breeding—or whatever we want to call it—so I feel that there is no reason for that extra risk assessment step. We are very concerned that that could act as a blocker to early stage research and development.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q Good afternoon and welcome. I will follow on from some of the previous questions and ask a similar question, really. In the end, it seems that one of the big challenges here is in maintaining public trust. While scientists may give a whole a series of assurances, if the public and perhaps some of the major retailers are not convinced, then there is a problem.

The key issue is getting the balance right between reassuring the public and following the science. However, to many of us, this Bill looks very thin on the “reassuring the public” side—so much so that, despite the FSA and its polling showing that the public would really like more information, as the Bill stands, that is not the way it will be. How convinced are you that the issue of public confidence will be resolved in favour of the science?

Sam Brooke: Having lived and breathed plant breeding for just over 20 years, I think we should have shouted more, and earlier, about how regulated the industry is, both at plant-breeding and seed level. We have a rigorous testing system in the national list process. Each variety undergoes at least two years of testing before it comes to the market. Every variety must be on that UK national list before it can go into sale. All that is underpinned, obviously, by laws on food safety, novel foods, and so on. We have this incredible history of safety of plant breeding in the UK, and of bringing those products into the market in a safe, sensible and secure way.

On top of the registration process, we also have seed marketing legislation, which really protects the user. Naturally, it protects the consumer in that it ensures that all seeds that go out into the market meet a common and prescribed standard. I think that is really important, and it is probably our fault as breeders that we have not shouted in the past about how legislated the process of producing new varieties and seeds actually is. That is what we need to go out and talk about, and tell the consumers. I am a consumer—we are all consumers—and I think, had consumers had more information and knowledge about how regulated varieties and seeds already are, we might already be a step closer to having that absolute trust.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q I will follow up on that, in that case. If there is that confidence, why the reluctance to allow consumers to know how their food is being produced? Polling from the Food Standards Agency suggests that consumers want that. Is there not a danger that it looks as if you are trying to hide something?

Sam Brooke: We are absolutely not against full transparency of breeding methods. Most breeders have already taken their own initiative to highlight, on their websites and social media platforms, how varieties are produced. I think it was back in March 2021 that we wrote to the Secretary of State, George Eustice, and said, “No, BSPB is absolutely up for transparency on the breeding process.” It is just that the best way of doing that is through the chain.

We have worked with DEFRA and looked at how we can easily bring that step into the national list process by highlighting what breeding process was used, because we already do, to a certain extent. For example, if it was a hybridised crop, we would have to highlight if it was cytoplasmic male sterility or a chemical-hybridising agent system, so we are already doing that. That, for me, would be another step forward and would support the public register, which is in the Bill and which we absolutely support.

[Deidre Brock]

Q You just spoke of the UK’s considerable reputation for offering protections around the breeding processes and so on, making them very safe. Does that differ markedly from the protections that the EU offers? Is the UK leading in that respect?

Sam Brooke: Naturally, we have been following EU legislation and have been historically aligning, quite rightly, with EU legislation on this, where we have our nearest trading partners and the majority of plant breeders. Because it is such an expensive industry, the majority of plant breeders are breeding at least for Europe if not internationally, because varieties travel quite nicely, especially to our nearest countries in the EU. We align with that. The key difference is probably that we have a lot of expertise in the UK and we want to keep that, because plant breeders are based here and actively breeding here—they have labs and food trials here and we have this fantastic, world-leading research and development in the likes of NIAB, John Innes and Rothamsted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jo Churchill]

Q Good afternoon, Dr Tinch. Can I ask how you anticipate the Bill helping in the area of aquatic species? How do you see it fitting in with the international regulatory environment?

Dr Tinch: That is an interesting question. I think all livestock breeding is now very much international, so it is difficult for small companies based in one country to operate successfully. There are a number of large international operators in genetics. In aquaculture in particular, we are not as far down the development of the species as some of the terrestrial species. We have been farming and breeding fish for about 40 to 50 years, so we are domesticating many of the species already. We are working hard to improve things such as disease resistance. There is good evidence, and we have seen very good examples, of genes that can be used to improve health and welfare of fish—particularly with Atlantic salmon, where a Scottish group identified a gene that accounted for over 80% of the variation of disease resistance. That was bred into the salmon populations and is now in most farmed salmon populations, making them resistant to the infectious pancreatic necrosis virus.

I see the implementation of gene editing allowing us to do similar things. Without having to go into the field, if you like, and look for animals that are carrying favourable mutations, we are able to identify genes that affect things like disease resistance, make targeted changes in those genes and make fish resistant as a result. I think that is a very positive way of taking breeding forward. It is not the only tool in the toolbox, but it certainly allows us to do some very interesting and valuable things for the health and welfare of the animals we farm.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q Good afternoon. You will probably find my line of questioning fairly predictable. Animal welfare organisations have consistently said that they are concerned about the introduction of traits, which would allow animals to be farmed more intensively. Given the concerns that have been raised around aquaculture in general, how concerned are you that that is the way it will be perceived and seen? My second question is more to do with the trade issues and comes almost on the back of the first question. If our European partners take a different view on this issue, what effect would it have on your industry’s exports?

Dr Tinch: That is a tough question. The association between improving the ability of animals to perform and changing disease resistance, and the idea that that means we are going to increase stocking density and make welfare worse, is very simplistic, and it is not as simple as that. That is not the way farmers tend to operate, and it is not the way that breeders operate practically. That argument is raised quite often as being a reason not to improve farm animals, but it is not like that.

We should use the technologies that we have to improve animals. We are putting them in a farming environment that is different from the environment they evolved in. We have to adapt them, using genetics, to the farming environment, and that is what we aim to do. We aim to improve health, welfare and the sustainability of the animals from an economic point of view and an ecological point of view, and we use a number of different methods to take that forward. The tool is genetics, and gene editing is the next step forward in our ability to change different things. We should look at how we aim to improve animals in a constructive and welfare-driven way.

On the trade issues, if the legislation put us in a position where we were restricted in the use of the technology, we would be faced with the problem of people farming gene edited animals in other countries, and we would not be as competitive. We are already seeing gene edited animals being farmed in Japan, for example, and there is very permissive legislation in places such as Canada and Australia. I think those countries will be the first to bring in this technology. I see that coming first in some of the economic traits, and we will face competition as a result—maybe not in the species that they are planning and gene editing at the moment, but as it comes through the system in these areas, we will see our industries being uncompetitive in their performance.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q To follow up, I was thinking more of it the other way round. If there was a time lag or a different view was taken in Europe, would you have to have two different production systems—one using gene edited animals, and one not? What are the practicalities of that?

Dr Tinch: If the legislation puts in place a system whereby gene edited animals would need to be labelled, you would need to have parallel systems. My argument would be that gene editing is a means of creating genetic variation that is identical to the variation that would occur naturally. As a consequence of that, we are not seeing products that are different.

If I identified a gene for disease resistance in a group of animals in the population that I was farming and bred it into the population for supply into the food chain, or I gene-edited the animal with the same genetic change—the same mutation—those animals would be identical in their genetics and performance, but if we labelled them and identified them differently, we would be creating two levels of animals within the production system that are essentially different. That would cause more problems than required in terms of the science behind the technology and the proportionality of how we are dealing with that lack of genetic difference.

[Deidre Brock]

Q Hello, Dr Tinch. It is good to see you. We have heard from folk who have been dealing with arable crops and so on, and there is a suggestion that the commercial benefits of this Bill would not be realised for anywhere between five and 11 years, but I wonder what the difference would be for aquaculture. Say the Bill becomes law, how quickly could we see commercial benefits for aquaculture farmers?

Dr Tinch: The key difference—let me know if I get too technical, as I do not want to drift away—is in the amount of time it takes to go from generation to generation. Some aquaculture species have a very short generation interval and can grow up and produce eggs quite quickly. For a lot of the warm water species that are farmed, and imported and exported around the world, we could move quite quickly because they have a short generation interval and they produce large numbers of eggs, so we could quickly be in a situation where we are producing animals with gene edits. That would be species like shrimp and tilapia. Shrimp are consumed at high levels in the UK. Tilapia are not, but they are still consumed at high rates around the world.

Atlantic salmon are much slower in terms of their growth and maturation. It takes at least three years—probably four years—to go through that cycle from egg to egg. From a practical point of view, we are not going to do it in one generation—it would be a couple of generations—so for Atlantic salmon we are talking at least four years, probably nearer eight years, until there were significant numbers of Atlantic salmon edited in the populations.