Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Second sitting)

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[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?

[Deidre Brock]

Q Yes, it is insufficient currently. They feel that there is a need for wider discussion of the impacts on the environment—woven throughout the Bill, I think—than currently. I wonder what kind of environmental impacts you would like to see included.

Professor Lovell-Badge: It depends. If you are saying it is the same as traditional breeding, then yes, it is probably the same, often, or very similar.

Alessandro Coatti: The case for deregulation—let us put it that way—is that basically, with these technologies, you can achieve changes in the genome that are potentially done already in traditional breeding. You are just doing it in a more energy and resource-efficient way—faster, etc. So there is definitely a policy case for this Bill, because research and innovation in this country can really provide those beneficial traits in plants and animals that we desperately need at the moment.

On the question whether this Bill captures all the potential impacts on the environment, for example, from a release of one of these organisms, you would think that the organisms that are passed through this Bill will not particularly need extra monitoring relative to the traditionally bred counterpart, if you see what I mean.

However, there could be boundaries or grey areas where a change could have arisen traditionally but it is not so common. Therefore, the committee should be able to trigger an additional risk assessment; and in my view, it looks like it can. Now, the question is this. On the environmental risk assessment, there is not much detail in the Bill—that is true—so it will be down to ACRE to provide more detailed guidance and analysis on how it would want the environmental risk assessment to be done.

[Deidre Brock]

Q If I may, I will ask one very quick question—well, it will not be that quick, actually. The answer will probably be quite long. I want to ask about the difference in regulatory regimes, potentially, between the UK and the EU. No matter how long that might be—we do not know; obviously, the EU will come back after its consultation next year. I just wonder what you think the impact might be, and whether in your view that will affect trade and potentially investment in the UK. Is that a tricky one?

Professor Lovell-Badge: That is a hard one. The EU will have to change—that is my view—because it is going to be way behind other countries, too. We are not talking just about the UK and the EU; we are also talking about the US, Canada, Argentina and other countries. If the whole regulation about genetically modified organisms and genome editing is not made more compatible with actually getting on and doing stuff that is useful, the EU will suffer, because it will ultimately—

[Deidre Brock]

But the impact here, in the UK, on trade? Obviously, it is the UK’s largest trading partner, so if it continues to be—

Professor Lovell-Badge: I can imagine there could be an impact. It is hard for me to tell what that might be. It is not my area of expertise at all.

Alessandro Coatti: Yes, I would not be able to discuss in detail how that might be. You probably need to have experts on it. But I am aware that the Food Standards Agency has produced a report on these changes in regulations and this evolution across the globe, and there is definitely a case for the UK to try—we say we would like the UK to lead the way, as it has done with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008. The UK could still lead the way by making legislation—regulation—that other countries would copy, but there is already a lot out there, so it has to harmonise with the regulations in other countries, such as Japan and Canada. It seems like the Bill is going one step in that direction. In terms of the relationship with the EU, as the closest economic partner and one of the biggest markets that the UK trades with, it is important for the UK, not necessarily to slow down excessively, but to maintain dialogue with the EU Commission while it reviews. The UK in the past has created legislation that the EU has then taken on. For example, when it comes to animals and research, the UK has led the way on the protections—eventually the EU adopted some of those elements. Even though the EU is not politically obliged to anymore, it could still value that.

Professor Lovell-Badge: You may be about to get to labelling. I think the registry is a good idea, because if someone wants to import something from the UK, at least it is then obvious that it could have been genome edited—otherwise they might not know.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

Q We have already established that the Bill covers plants and animals, but not micro-organisms. Given that there were suggestions from DEFRA that animals would be considered later down the line, I wondered if you had any thoughts on the fact that they are now included in this Bill.

Alessandro Coatti: In our response we commented mainly on plants and animals, while making some reference to other uses. There are already leading labs in the UK looking at genome-edited livestock species, for example, and how doing genome editing in those species could be beneficial on many levels. I am quite sympathetic to the fact that animals are included in the Bill, even though there is less of a history of genome editing, and genetic modification, in animals than there is in plants.

It seems to me that more safeguards are added here for animals than for plants. There is animal health and welfare assessment as part of the Bill. With animals, it seems clear to me—but Robin can correct me—that genome editing can be used quite safely. We are talking about the techniques and the process, not the outcomes and the traits. If you look at the techniques with the animals, with a number of species you can be pretty sure that you are making the right change in the genome that you wanted and that you are not adding unwanted changes anywhere else. We can say that there are not many additional risks when it comes to technique, relative to traditional breeding. However, that still has to be caveated a bit.

Professor Lovell-Badge: Some of the methods of genome editing are now so efficient and precise that I do not think it is a great concern, but you always have to check. There are good ways of checking what you have done and what you have got. I would not be that concerned. You would have to check the original animal that has been modified, but once you get to subsequent generations, you will be pretty certain of exactly what you have, and of anything wrong. The methods are being used in humans for somatic genome editing. We know a lot about them and how accurate and safe they can be.

Alessandro Coatti: We pointed out two things in relation to the methodological aspects. Robin mentioned one aspect before: how the gene relates to the phenotype. You change something and then you have a trait change in the animal. Some genes have functions in different organs and tissues, so you want to ensure that by doing something you are not messing up something else. That can be done and has to be done as part of the Bill—you should make sure that it will be done.

The other question is about the reproductive techniques you sometimes use to work on the embryos. Those can also have health and welfare implications for the animals, but it should all come down to an expert committee reviewing the application for the genome edited animals, which could say, “Okay, it looks like they checked everything they should have on the technique.”

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Deidre Brock]

Q Professor Halford, you mentioned that you have the largest gene edited wheat crop trial in Europe—is that right? Could you talk us through what will happen if this Bill becomes an Act? What steps will you go through to get the product to market, and where will your involvement end? I would find some clarity on this really helpful.

Professor Halford: We have used CRISPR-Cas9 to knock out a gene that makes an amino acid called asparagine, which gets converted to acrylamide. That is our target.

[Deidre Brock]

You are giving Hansard a few challenges today.

Professor Halford: Acrylamide is a processing contaminant, so it only forms during processing; it is not in the plant. For consumers, it is not an issue—we could talk about that all day—but it is quite a big regulatory compliance issue for the food industry. We are trying to reduce the potential for acrylamide to form during processing by reducing the amount of asparagine in the grain of the wheat. That is where we are at the moment.

Because you do a GM step to put the CRISPR machinery into the plant, some of those components are still in most of the plants we have, so the field trial is running under GM regulations at the moment. The editing has been done, and it has worked. We have very low asparagine wheat grain growing in the glasshouse, at least. We are in the process of crossing away the GM bit, and we do have some plants now—not in the field trial, but under glass—that are now GM-free. They are a qualifying higher plant, and we have registered them as such.

[Deidre Brock]

Q I am thinking about getting it to the commercially available stage.

Professor Halford: We have five plant breeders working with us. If it pans out in the field and it all looks good, we could hand our genotypes over to those breeders and they could start incorporating the trait into their breeding lines. That process would take probably five to 10 years. We have five years’ consent to run the field trials. You need several years before you are going to convince a breeder that your trait is stable and it will give them what they need. There is nothing rapid about the process.

[Deidre Brock]

That is really helpful, thank you.

[Clive Lewis]

Q I am just trying to get my head around some of the comments that have been made so that I can apply them to the legislation. I think Mr Angus felt that intellectual property rights were a potential barrier to entry, whereas you felt that an excessive regulatory framework was a barrier to entry. What would the main barrier be?

Professor Napier: In my opinion, it is regulatory approval that is the barrier.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Deidre Brock]

Q So a real commitment to transparency and some effort to address the possibilities of unintended consequences on the back of this need to be tightened up in the Bill?

All witnesses indicated assent.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Q Going back to what was being said about animals, particularly what Joanna was saying, I want to try to unpick this. It has been mooted that one of the benefits of the Bill is that it could result in the breeding of more disease-resistant animals and in less use of antibiotics in livestock management. The downside is that that could pave the way for more intensive farming, because disease obviously spreads when lots of animals are herded together. That does not necessarily mean that making animals more disease resistant and not having to use antibiotics on them is a bad thing.

Some witnesses who gave evidence this morning said that it is not the Bill that is at fault. There is a completely separate argument, they said, about whether we want to increase the intensification and industrialisation of animal farming. Where do you sit on that argument? They said that the animal welfare codes deal with some of the concerns. I would say, however, that they are not operating in the right way at the moment, because we already allow a degree of intensification and, to my mind, animal welfare standards are not good.

On the separate issue of increasing yields from animals, cows produce an awful lot more milk than they would have done a few decades ago, and certainly a lot more milk than they need to feed their own calves. Where do you sit on the use of this technology for that purpose? Finally, do you think that the Bill’s provision for the Secretary of State to refer things to a welfare advisory body is a sufficient safeguard? Sorry, that was an awful lot of questions, and you do not have much time to answer.

Joanna Lewis: You asked whether you can separate the intention of gene editing to solve animal welfare problems from the broader challenge of facilitating the perpetuation of systems that result in very poor animal welfare. I think it is important that we bring these together—as the public brought them together in the Nuffield Council on Bioethics public dialogue. We know that conventional animal breeding trends have been to prioritise greater yield, litter size and fast growth over the welfare of sentient animals, and we know that the argument for gene editing is partly that it speeds things up and is likely, therefore, to accelerate those trends. The public were saying, through that dialogue, that this is where they want to see governance. They want the Government to come in and say, “This is our vision for the future of animal farming. This is how it is going to become a higher welfare system that also delivers for climate, nature and health. This is the role we want to see gene editing play in that context.”

I know that you will be hearing evidence from Compassion in World Farming on Thursday, and I know that amendments will be proposed to try to make sure that there are additional tests—which could be linked to the Secretary of State’s powers, secondary regulation or the role of the welfare advisory body—on whether these traits are going to focus on yield, litter size and fast growth and cause lasting harm to the welfare of the animal. Also, are they going to perpetuate, facilitate or enable a farming system that is very detrimental to the welfare of animals? Those are the amendments that will be coming through from animal welfare bodies.

Roger Kerr: In terms of the disease-resistance issue, we have to be really careful about how we approach this. What we have seen, albeit through the use of antibiotics, is the reduction of disease. Again, unfortunately, I am referring back to the dairy industry. We have seen farmers driven to reduce cell counts in dairy cows to a point where the cow’s immune system has been suppressed to such a degree that the more virulent diseases come in, because there is not the natural, more benign flora around any more. Therefore, you have cows going down with E. coli and other things, which is killing them. We have seen this continual drive to reduce the immune system and reduce the cell count.

What we have found more recently is that allowing the cow to have a more natural immune system actually allows it to live a longer and healthier life. We have to be really careful when we start talking about disease that we do not start messing with something but then find that we end up with a whole lot of unintended consequences in terms of opening the animal up to other disease implications. Ultimately, we will just end up on the same old wheel of trying to continually firefight because the animal is going down with disease.

On the yield aspect, again, we can keep saying, “Oh, well, we can genetically breed them to produce high yield,” but what we find is that the longevity of the animals is massively impacted. These cows that can produce 12,000 or 15,000 litres of milk do not live very long because, unfortunately, cows are just not designed to do that. We have to be really careful about what we consider to be a farm animal and what it is there for. If we continue to drive it, we are effectively supercharging its physiology, and therefore it will ultimately not be able to live as long.

Using cows as an example, if you go into a collecting yard or a cubicle shed, you will see the cows breathing really quickly, even though they are lying down, because their physiology is going so fast. What we are effectively doing at the moment is turning what was a very low-input, low-output animal into a Formula 1 car. Unsurprisingly, they do not cope with it and they fall over. What we are doing now in terms of genetically editing is stepping that up a whole other gear. We have to be really careful about what it is that we are seeking to achieve here, and I think we have to look, in terms of welfare, not only at disease resistance but at longevity, quality of life and ability to withstand other disease impacts.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Deidre Brock]

Q All of that would provide sufficient protection before any of these were grown commercially, at such a scale that it would be, I would imagine, quite difficult to prevent impacts, if they were happening.

Professor Oldroyd: That is the process that we have put in for mutation breeding, for instance. For mutation breeding, I irradiate the seed to create mutations in the seed, look for the lines that give a trait that is useful, and then breed that into the conventional lines. That is already happening; it underpins a lot of our food production and we have a regulatory framework to ensure that what we are actually releasing out into the world is safe and effective.

[Deidre Brock]

Q And you think that the regulatory framework contained within the Bill is sufficient?

Professor Oldroyd: I think it is certainly sufficient for assessing the validity of material produced by methods that are no different from what happens in nature.

[Deidre Brock]

Q Thank you. Finally, you mentioned that your funding was a mix of public and private, Dr Harrison.

Dr Harrison: Yes.

[Deidre Brock]

What are your thoughts with regard to, say, Mr Angus’s previous points about the ownership of genes or the licensing of genes, and trying to ensure that that does not become a problem for breeders such as Mr Angus, or indeed for growers. We have discussed that in a few panels, so I just wondered how his point could be addressed.

Dr Harrison: Bill was talking about the breeder’s exemption, which means that once a variety has been protected it is put on the market, and any other breeder can then take that material, cross with it and do onward work.

If I understand it correctly—this is an area that is changing rapidly—there is still uncertainty, as Jonathan Napier said, about what can and cannot be protected. Patenting genes is very difficult, so it is more likely that the technology will be protected than the genes themselves. Even so, there could be some instances where there is some level of protection around a particular trait.

There are schemes now being set up that would allow the breeder’s exemption still to apply in the event of a licensing for a particular gene-edited trait in that variety. So those systems are being set up by industry at the moment, because ultimately there is a win-win there, because the licence holder of the intellectual property will want to see that out there at some level, and the plant breeders will want to use the material. I am not an expert in this area, and I am not a legal expert, but I understand that there are schemes being set up to take account of that. That is only in the instances where stuff is actually protectable; most stuff probably won’t be protectable, so the breeder’s exemption will still apply and people can still cross with it.

The bigger issue—the one raised by Jonathan—is that if you have an overly burdensome regulatory landscape of pre-authorisation to take something to market, for many that will be the thing that kills the technology. It is really important that that proportionality remains. It is only for things that may substantially affect nutrition that you would go down a route whereby the FSA would even class it under novel food regulations. I would expect that the majority of things being developed are agronomic traits, which would—as they do in many jurisdictions, such as Canada—sit outside the purview of food standards and are not classed as novel food in any way. They would progress to the market just as conventionally bred things do at the moment.

[Deidre Brock]

Q I suppose I am thinking back to the Soil Association representative’s point about 60% of seed grown in the US—or it may have been worldwide—being held by four companies. Is that a route that we would rather not go down, or is it not something that you are concerned about?

Dr Harrison: Do you mean in terms of additional—

[Deidre Brock]

If they take over and buy out smaller breeders, for example.

Dr Harrison: You have to look at the situation. The market is one thing, and the Bill is talking about gene-editing technologies and whether they are substantially different. Personally, I do not think that the two are really related.

[Deidre Brock]

Although it is certainly bound up in the arguments about gene editing and genetic modification.

Dr Harrison: In many ways, among the small and medium-sized enterprises such as Bill’s, in a landscape such as the UK, where there is a lot of innovation happening, there are start-ups starting now that want to do breeding and gene editing, so you may well see the opposite happening: a democratisation of the process and more people entering the market as the barrier to entry is much lower because of the regulation change.

Professor Oldroyd: The food production sector is no different from any other sector in this free market economy. I hear a lot of concerns about a few companies owning most of the seeds, but I do not hear the same about a few companies owning most of the drugs, cars, phones, clothes or any other product. That is a reality of our free market economy. The food production system is just like any other sector; there are major players who have a sizeable part of the market share.

Richard made a very important point. The phenomenal restrictions that are being put on traditional genetic modification have actually meant that only the big players that have deep pockets can use that technology. I feel as though we have ended up in the situation that most people feared, where a few companies have total control of a technology, and that is principally because of the cost of releasing those traits. If we follow the Bill and treat them as equivalent to conventional breeding, we absolutely liberate the technology for SMEs to get in the game. At the moment, they could not afford to do that with GM.

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

Q It is good to see you again, Professor Oldroyd and Dr Harrison. Your last comments have thrown my question in many ways. You said that not much is said about pharmaceuticals and other products in the free market, but that is quite a low bar. I have been involved with the trade-related aspects of intellectual property waiver campaign. A big part of the global south is campaigning to have access to the understanding of how to make anti-covid drugs, and they are struggling.

I do not think that is a model that I would want to apply to food. Some of us would like to see something more robust that did not make the mistakes that we have made on pharmaceuticals, for example. Food supply is critical, especially as we move through the 21st century with the climate crisis and a growing population. When I was asking you questions as a BBC journalist a long time ago, I was always struck by your passion for the science and for communicating the science. As currently constructed, does the Bill provide the protections we need? Outside your laboratories, away from the pure science, there are free-market corporations for which the bottom line is the end game and the main driver. Do you feel that this science is beyond abuse and beyond being used in the same way that perhaps big pharma have cornered those markets?

Lastly, I understand the notion that reducing barriers opens up the market to small and medium-sized companies, but the history of any industry shows us that big players begin to hoover up small players over decades, and you end up back in an oligopoly or monopoly situation. That does not necessarily have to happen, but that is what usually happens with new tech. There is a free-for-all when everyone piles in, but ultimately people sell up and move on, and the big companies hoover up. When you get past the science and it reaches the real world, do you feel that there is the opportunity for abuse? Does the Bill protect us from that?

Professor Oldroyd: With the caveat of clause 3, legislating gene editing as equivalent to conventional breeding is the best way to allow small to medium-sized enterprises to become involved in the technology. If you really want to see a break in major corporate ownership, lowering the barriers to how you get a product from that technology is almost certainly going to facilitate that. As I said earlier, the big problem currently with GM is that it is so costly to release a GM variety that only “the big four” can afford to do that. I think that taking this approach will help that ownership of lines.

Certainly from me, as a researcher, the Bill as it currently stands greatly facilitates me to work directly with plant breeders and move products through the conventional plant breeding mechanism into the market and on to the consumer. Some of that plant breeding is in the big four, but quite a bit of it is not. Those are more the medium-sized enterprises, not necessarily BASF or Bayer, although they do have a role in some of that. I think the current Bill will certainly facilitate that broadening of ownership of the technology and a speeding up of the impact to the consumer.

Dr Harrison: If I could add one small point, our public research institutes in the UK have a pivotal role to play here. We do research funded by the Government in this area and we publish that. We can protect it before or we can just publish it so it is free and able to be used by many.

You could really think strategically about how those research organisations are used to direct change in the way that one would want to see, so that varieties come on to the market either nearly complete, so breeders can take them up, which is often what happens, or even release complete varieties, as happens in many other countries, from public funded research organisations. Again, that allows freedom of choice, so varieties come on to the market that have traits that are desirable and do not suffer from the problem you point out, which is that some small companies may become subsumed into larger companies.

Thinking about it more broadly—this is outside the scope of the Bill—there is an absolute opportunity for the UK to lead on bringing those traits to the point at which they can be taken to market, in a variety of different ways that are not just dependent on the big four.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Deidre Brock]

Q We had a plant breeder in before—Mr Angus—who talked about his concern about ownership and the licensing of genes and, I suppose, the potential concentration of ownership into larger companies. What are your thoughts on that? Do you share that concern?

Sam Brooke: No, I think the Bill has the potential to open up the technology a lot more. It will naturally open up what traits are available both publicly and privately, but I would imagine especially publicly. The majority of new traits that have come through historically have come through publicly.

[Deidre Brock]

Q Is that is something you would like to see continue?

Sam Brooke: For me, it is all about choice. That is the most important thing. We are not going to get great investment in these new technologies if these commercial business cannot make some money somewhere along the line. We have to be able to protect that IP, which we already do very well in the UK with our current royalty system. We currently protect new varieties and IP on varieties very successfully, which makes us a great area for investment in plant breeding. I would like to see that maintained.

As I mentioned, there are different trait licensing platforms already available. For example, Corteva is one of the big ones, as we may want to describe them, which has already initiated its own platform for accessing its traits. I do not think it should be seen as a concern. There are already breeder exemptions around using new varieties, and I do not see this being any different when we get to using precision technology.

[Deidre Brock]

Okay, that’s interesting.

[The Chair]

If there are no further questions, we will bring this session to a close.

Examination of Witness

Dr Alan Tinch gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Deidre Brock]

Q Assuring quality control, if you like, would presumably add quite significantly to that lifecycle, so are we talking 10 years?

Dr Tinch: Well, if I go back to the example of the gene that was discovered in Scottish populations for disease resistance, it was described in 2008 and was at high levels in commercial populations in 2015-16. Do not quote me exactly on those numbers, but it was that sort of timescale to go from identifying the animals to using them in breeding, going through the multiplication system and coming into production. If we were able to do that, and the technology would allow us to move as quickly as that in some populations by editing the gene, making the change and then breeding from those animals, we could move as quickly as that—a generation and a half to get it to high levels in the population.

The process that breeders go through normally to assess their animals is as you describe: if you discover a mutation, you look at it in the population, look at its effects on a number of different traits, and judge that it is an animal that is capable of performing well in the production environment. If everything is favourable, you then take it forward into production. That was the example relating to infectious pancreatic necrosis in Atlantic salmon. The gene had an effect on disease resistance and it did not have any perceivable effects on any other traits. For the sorts of traits we are talking about in Atlantic salmon, the case would be the same: we would evaluate it within the populations in the breeding programme—typically thousands of animals—and then as that data builds up and everything works out, we would expand that to the commercial populations.

We could go as fast as that. Obviously, with short-generation species with higher rates of reproduction, we could go faster than that. That process of identifying the animal, looking at its performance across a number of traits and judging that is a process that can move at the timescale I have described.

[Deidre Brock]

Q I am not sure whether you will be able to answer this, but I was just wondering about food labelling. What are your thoughts on that, as opposed to the notification systems and the public register that is proposed in the Bill? Do you think there is a stronger case for labelling animal products than crops—plants?

Dr Tinch: To go back to that position—

[The Chair]

Just before you answer that question, may I ask you not to lean too far forward into the mic, because we will miss your face, and we do not want that? Could you stay neatly there for lip readers who need to follow you?

Dr Tinch: No problem. On labelling—going back to the position that says the genetics we are talking about is indistinguishable and identical variation that occurs in the wild and in farm populations—if we say that they are identical, then logically I see no reason to label that. The product is the same, the means by which it was generated is slightly different, but it is identical, to all intents and purposes, to a mutation that would have occurred naturally. I see no need for labelling.

[Deidre Brock]

Q Okay. What about public opinion on that?

Dr Tinch: That is a different question.

[Deidre Brock]

Given agriculture is a subject of some contention in Scotland at times, what do you think?

Dr Tinch: It has been a hugely successful industry in Scotland. Your public opinion is interesting. To give a broad analogy, the other example of products being very close in terms of their composition and quality but labelled for production-system differences is organic farming. There is a drive there that says, “Okay, people are interested in the production system and they ask the product to be labelled to identify it as premium.” There is that precedent, but I go back to the position that says these are products that have identical composition. They are produced in different ways at the point where the mutation is either discovered or produced by gene editing, but they are identical at point of sale. I see no reason for labelling that, unless, like with organics, there is a premium for that sort of production system.

[Deidre Brock]

Q I see. This is a bit out of leftfield, but I heard earlier that there is a genetic technology Bill that has been proposed—or has gone through—in Norway. Obviously, there is a considerable amount of Norwegian interest in agriculture in Scotland. Is that something that you have come across, and if you have, are there any elements of it that you think could be applied to this Bill? Do you think it will have any influence on Norwegian-owned agriculture in Scotland? You are closer to the field than I am, but I am wondering if that is something that might occur.

Dr Harrison: Similar discussions are going on. A position on describing technologies where the outcome is the same but the technology used to produce it is different has been adopted, as it has been in a number of other countries—Canada and Australia. The principle of recognising that the product that is being farmed is the same as one that would have occurred naturally is being adopted by several countries. The danger is that we might come out of line with that.

The influence that Norway has over the UK and Atlantic farming industry is interesting in that it is a major player in the Scottish industry. Norway’s industry is technology led; Atlantic salmon farming is technology led and it will take the technology forward. I would expect that Norway takes its responsibilities as farmers and guardians of the livestock seriously, and farms according to good practice. The technology can be used as a means of improving performance, health and welfare of our animals. We should bring those sorts of technologies forward and use them. Those are the arguments that have been made in Norway as well.

[David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)]

Q Thank you, Dr Tinch, it was very interesting to hear your perspective on that. I listened very carefully to your responses to Ms Brock about the time it would take for multiple generations to become viable and to get access to market. In terms of investment here and now, or at least in the shorter term, in research and development, we have heard from other witnesses about the attraction of promoting investment in other food sources. For example, not in today’s evidence but from elsewhere, we have seen reports from the Roslin Institute and James Hutton Institute that they are very keen for this legislation to come to pass. Would you say that is the same for your field of expertise, particularly in Scotland?

Dr Tinch: Absolutely. I am a graduate of the University of Edinburgh and studied at the Roslin Institute, and have collaborated on a number of projects with scientists at Roslin in aquaculture, developing genetic solutions to disease resistance and applying those in populations. We are a local leader in terms of our ability to understand these technologies, develop them to the point of application and then deliver them through production systems.

The danger if we do not lead in that area is that the technology will move elsewhere. I now work for an American company working in gene editing in agriculture. I am not saying the reason I am doing that is because there is a lack of investment in the UK, but there is certainly lots of investment outside the UK in the technology and a lot of the technology is going to be applied in breeding programmes outside of the UK in areas where the legislation looks as if it is more permissive.

The UK model, particularly through the BBSRC and identifying projects that will have meaning within industry, is a very good example of how science should be applied and carried out. I have benefited from that on a personal level and a company level, in terms of my career development and the development of companies I have worked for.

The danger is that if we do not allow the application of new technologies, we will become part of the second lane in the use of this technology. I would not like to see that. Our approach as a country towards animal welfare and the way that we set up farming systems is world class. In many cases, we lead the way in the development of technologies. We have some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world and we will continue to review that, I understand, in a constructive way. We have very high standards in farming. If we prevent this sort of technology from being employed because of a precautionary principle, which is one of the areas where technology gets held back—“There’s a slight chance that there may be a problem that results from this technology, so we shouldn’t do it”— that is regressive. I do not think that is the way that we should take science forward.

We should understand the risks, evaluate the risks and look at the technologies. Where they are able to be used for good purposes, we should take them forward. That is the case for gene editing. If you look at the way that the research is lining up, and the way that the breeding companies are talking about the traits that they are going to use, these are examples of taking the technology forward to benefit animal welfare and the sustainability of animal production, and we should be one of the early adopters of the technology.