Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Fourth sitting)

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 30th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q What would be needed in the Bill to safeguard against the issues that you have just raised?

Penny Hawkins: Well, I was listening to the representations this morning and I can only echo what everybody was saying about the welfare advisory body. At present it is there to report to the Secretary of State on whether the notifier has had regard to the risks to the health and welfare of the animal and their progeny. There does appear to be some provision in clause 15 on the suspension and revocation of marketing authorisation. That provides for the Secretary of State to receive information on the health and welfare of the progeny of those animals, but that is dependent on clause 14 on reporting obligations, which states only that:

“Regulations may make provision for requiring the notifier…to provide the Secretary of State with…information”

about their progeny

“during periods…prescribed by the regulations”.

All those elements that relate to long-term surveillance really need to be tightened up, and they need to be “musts” instead of “mays”. Many of those are subject to the affirmative procedure, which I know is normal for statutory instruments, but that again does not reassure people who are concerned about the long-term welfare effects that an adequate mechanism is in place for picking these up.

Similarly, it is not at all clear what qualifications the inspectors who are going to be active under the Bill need to have, so it would be good to see some reassurance as to how they are going to be qualified and to see it explicitly said that they will have the right to access and inspect animals.

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

Q Thank you for coming along to speak to us this afternoon. The RSPCA has raised concerns about the safety of gene editing, stating:

“There is no history of safe and reliable use”.

What else could that cover? What are your concerns? Can you expand on that, please?

Penny Hawkins: Just to clarify, when we talk about safety we are talking about the safety of animals. There are two kinds of concerns about gene editing: one from the consumer point of view and one from an animal welfare point of view, and we are talking about the animal welfare point of view. I listened particularly to Professor Henderson when he spoke to you, and I noted that he said there will have to be a two to three-year process of gathering and analysing scientific evidence around both on-farm and off-farm welfare

“before the secondary legislation can be enacted.”––[Official Report, Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Public Bill Committee, 28 June 2022; c. 17-18, Q24.]

He said that the process for that was laid out in the Bill, but I have looked at the Bill really carefully and I cannot see any such process either in the Bill or the explanatory notes.

This morning Professor Henderson said that more thinking needed to be done regarding animal welfare advisory bodies and advice on the Bill. Coming from the DEFRA chief scientific adviser, I do not think that that is very reassuring. All of the concerns that I expressed previously about the longitudinal reporting and monitoring of health and welfare also apply here. I am particularly thinking about clause 9, which explains what happens from the bureaucratic aspect if an animal is no longer deemed to be precision bred. Presumably if an animal is no longer deemed to be precision bred, it will either be because they have not been characterised or phenotyped properly or because the genome is no longer stable.

As you heard from the Royal Society of Biology, genes can have effects in multiple tissues, so in these cases there must be a much clearer mechanism for identifying and tracing these animals, and that is also lacking in the Bill. From an animal safety and welfare perspective, there really are some issues that need to be addressed.

[Deidre Brock]

Q You mentioned ASPA. What are your thoughts on the potential conflicts between this legislation and the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022?

Penny Hawkins: That is an extremely important question. Reading the sentience Act, I do not think it will necessarily preclude gene editing per se. What it requires is an examination of whether or to what extent the Government are having or have had all due regard to the ways in which the policy might have an adverse effect on the welfare of animals as sentient beings. At the moment it is simply not possible to say that on the basis of the information in the draft statute.

Clause 12 talks about the welfare advisory body reporting to the Secretary of State on whether the notifier has had regard to the risks to the health or welfare of the animal or their progeny and has taken “reasonable steps” to identify or address them. But we do not know how the welfare advisory body will be constituted or resourced, how independent it will be, what kind of expertise it will have access to, whether it will just confine its assessment to looking at those particular traits that have been identified by the notifier or whether it will think about wider issues relating to the process of gene editing, as Professor Campbell said, looking at purposes or at the global impact of gene editing those animals. So it is not possible to say from the way the statute is drafted at the moment whether all due regard has been paid. We just have to hope that the secondary legislation will address this, but at the moment we just don’t know.

[Deidre Brock]

Q I have seen criticism that the Bill is too focused on enabling the commercial opportunities inherent within gene editing, rather than focusing sufficiently on animal welfare, for example. Would you agree with that, looking at the Bill as it is drafted at the moment?

Penny Hawkins: Yes, because even the animal welfare applications are ultimately for human benefit. If you think about the gene edited polled cattle, which are the poster child for the animal welfare applications, clearly polling cattle is extremely painful and distressing for them. A world in which that did not have to happen would certainly be a better world for the cattle, but it is actually possible to keep horned cattle together. It can be done, but it is very expensive. Many farmers would not be able to afford it and many consumers would be unwilling, or probably unable, to pay the prices that would be involved. So, yes, there is a welfare benefit, but it is ultimately an economic benefit.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Q Could I just press a little more about the Animal Sentience Committee side of things? We are now in the position where there is the welfare advisory body under this legislation, the Animal Sentience Committee and all the licensing regimes under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. Do you think it would be better if this was all merged into one organisation? We also heard about the codes that apply in terms of farm animal welfare, some of which is legislative and some of which is guidance. Is it not all a bit messy?

Penny Hawkins: No, I do not think it is messy. The Animal Welfare Centre of Excellence, which will bring all these committees together, will ensure co-ordination. The purpose of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 is to look at policy across all policy areas and see whether due regard has been paid to the effects on the welfare of animals as sentient beings. The welfare advisory body is something that the Animal Sentience Committee would look at when it was making that assessment. I still think it is really important to have this overarching body that will look at policy right across the board. To me, they are all separate entities that complement one another.

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[Daniel Zeichner]

Q Following on from that, do you see anything in the Bill that limits the scope for herbicide-resistant edits in plants, or, for instance, pesticide-resistant bees, which I have been reading about? Those are both possibilities that raise some wider issues.

Pat Thomas: They certainly do raise wider issues. Within the scope of this Bill, as my colleague pointed out, there does not appear to be any type of genetic engineering that is truly exempted. If a plant or animal breeder can make a case—that case is not checked, it is simply made; it is a notification, not an assessment—that their plant is herbicide tolerant and that there somewhere exists a plant that is also herbicide tolerant, that plant becomes exempted under these provisions.

Lawrence Woodward: If I may just add to that, I had rather lazily gone along to some extent with the claim that gene editing technology will reduce the amount of herbicides and pesticides being used. I was therefore somewhat upset and surprised to see that Cibus, one of the major gene editing developers, put out its annual report the other day with a press release praising efforts around the world and in the UK to deregulate genome editing, because it saw the possibility of increasing herbicide-tolerant traits for sale, thereby increasing the use of herbicides in agriculture. It saw a way in which genome editing technology could increase the effectiveness of putting in herbicide-tolerant traits. That is an example of the complex nature of this area. The question of utility, sustainability, reduction of herbicides and so on, which people talk about, is really not a given.

Pat Thomas: I just want to add a brief point: within the scope of the Bill, the concept of risk is being used interchangeably with sustainability. Risk assessment and sustainability assessment are two entirely different things. A sustainability assessment will look more across the board at the sorts of effects that we are talking about here. We should not take for granted that risk or safety can be used as a proxy for sustainability.

[Deidre Brock]

Q May I return you, Ms Thomas, to the points that you were making about Norway? I think the Norwegians introduced a gene technologies Act fairly recently. When I read about the approach that they took to the issue, it seemed to involve a lot more public consultation and discussion. Will you expand a little on the approach they have taken to this issue? What can we learn from it? What would you like to see included in this Bill?

Pat Thomas: I think we can learn the value of citizen views. I have been a little disturbed, in the first session and this one, by the vague disdain for citizens—“Citizens must not understand the science, therefore they must not have a view.” Citizens are major stakeholders in the food system.

What that board does is to have a high percentage of civil society groups in particular, who are used as a proxy for citizens, but it also seeks out citizen views. What we have learned from citizen engagement in our work and in sharing the work of others is that citizens tend to ask a much wider range of questions of the food system. When they are not asking those questions, it is because some aspect of the food system has been hidden from them. For example, until we understood about battery hens, people did not ask questions about that, but they ask them now. When people began to worry about pesticides in their food, they began to ask questions about organic food.

A concern for me about the Bill and citizen engagement is that the term “precision bred” is not well known. It is in fact a way of sneaking genetically engineered foods into the food system. I can envisage a case in which—even if there was a turnaround on labelling—to label something “precision bred”, for example, is not useful information to people who do not understand what that term means.

To circle back to your question, the importance of including citizens in these kinds of assessments is that we get a much more well-rounded assessment, and something that takes into account questions such as, “Why are we doing this?”, “Is there an alternative?” and, “If there is an alternative, why are we doing this?” Those questions are very important.

Lawrence Woodward: May I add to that? The Norwegian law is one thing. People always think, “Okay, it’s in Scandinavia, they don’t do much GM anyway,” but I remind you that in 2015 the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee—of which I believe you were a member, Chair—recommended in its inquiry into agricultural technology the establishment of a permanent citizens panel to work alongside ACRE in assessing all these other aspects of gene technology, such as its application, its commercial roll-out and so on. That is embedded in the House of Commons proceedings. It did not get very far, obviously. The other point about that is that although that provision did not go into detail as to what would constitute a permanent citizens’ panel, the Norwegian one does, in terms of balance of citizen representation and stakeholder representation.

[Deidre Brock]

Q We received a briefing from GeneWatch UK, in which it talked about its concerns about a potentially significant impact on trade. As you perhaps know, the Scottish Government are waiting for the EU to complete its consultation on gene editing and GM, and the difference between those two, and whether or not it may allow them to be permissible within Europe as well.

GeneWatch UK said that if exempt GMOs are not traceable—because they are considered to be, as we have heard from several witnesses, the same as conventionally bred organisms—manufacturers should be required to publish a validated test for each GMO released. It suggests that all countries that require such organisms to be regulated could potentially refuse all imports of food and other products that contain that exempt GMO. Could you just expand a little on that for us? I would be interested to hear your points of view.

Lawrence Woodward: If I have understood GeneWatch UK’s position, it is pointing out one of the aspects of this situation, namely that if England proceeds by itself —isolated, without regulatory alignment—that would raise all kinds of trade transparency marketing issues, which are not really addressed and which the Regulatory Policy Committee identified as not being really addressed in the impact statement. You then have dysfunction in regulation and alignment, which leads to confusion in the marketplace, and I think that GeneWatch UK was pointing out the fact that England might allow non-labelling and non-traceability of some of these products would not carry a weight in other markets.

There are many different ways of dealing with that situation. What is absolutely clear is that there needs to be in this Bill greater consideration of traceability throughout the supply chains so that the market can function, and both farmers and consumers have choice. There are different ways of doing that.

GeneWatch UK pointed to the need to develop specific analytical tests. Those analytical tests are being developed. Robin May at the Food Standards Agency pointed out—I think he made some comment that labelling is useless if it cannot be verified. In theory that is true but, first, analytical tests do exist, they are being developed and they can be developed faster. Secondly, we already have in a lot of areas geographical identification and source of origin identification—in egg marketing, whether they are free range eggs or barn eggs. We already have marketing verification based on provenance and audit trails. There is no reason why traceability cannot be built up on that, if the right kind of mandatory information is put in the Bill.

There is a separate discussion about labelling. Obviously, we are in favour of labelling. How that would be, where it is and so on—we recognise the difficulties.

Pat Thomas: To add to that, we have heard a lot over these sessions about how it is not possible to trace these organisms and that simply is not true, particularly for a patented organism. There must be something in place to trace that, in order to protect the patent. So, alongside the development of these organisms, there is also the development of the tests to trace them. The question is whether we will put those into effect or not. I would assume that if the developers want to protect their patents they would want to ensure that those tests are there and available.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

Q There are a number of things that I think we have heard robust evidence on, but you have clearly spent a lot of time looking at this in a global context. Countries such as Canada, Japan and Argentina are forging forward and allowing their scientists to develop new lines and strains to move forward their agriculture. Do you have any comments on how they are doing it? In all candour, I am worried that, to prevent worries and questions such that you are raising, we almost throttle something that has the potential to be genuinely transformative. What assessment have you made of what Canada, Argentina and Japan, who are forging ahead, are doing?

Lawrence Woodward: People often forget in this conversation that European research establishments overall have made an awful lot of research investment into GMO technology and gene editing technology. Some great work is being done in UK research establishments. It is not that we have a block on this. On how much faster would deregulation, in terms of what is envisaged in the Bill, increase that research activity, others can speak more on that. It is not entirely clear to me that that is the case. It might be a benefit in terms of increasing inward investment from multinational companies.

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[Daniel Zeichner]

That is a very sobering prospect. Thank you; that was helpful.

[Deidre Brock]

Q Thank you to both our witnesses for your evidence so far. I would like to hear your views on the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 and the implications for the future. Scotland and Wales in particular have objected to these measures—until such time that we, in Scotland’s case, have heard from the EU about its consultation on this.

Dr Edenborough: My views will be limited to the legal aspects. The simple consequence is that something may, for example, occur in England that may not be permissible in Scotland. But there is uncertainty with respect to whether, if you grow something in England, you could sell the product in Scotland. That is unclear. I think that is probably as far as I can go legally.

[Deidre Brock]

Q In terms of the implications of regulatory divergence from the EU—[Interruption.] Is that a tough one?

Dr Edenborough: I am just trying to make sure that I understand your question.

[Deidre Brock]

Okay. Obviously, the problem for Scotland is that we would like to stay aligned with EU regulations as far as is possible and practicable. What are the implications for us and for exporting if the 2020 Act forces us away from alignment with EU regulations? I am thinking in particular about the impact on trade.

Dr Edenborough: There might be ramifications with respect to the rights that have been obtained. Actually, this slightly conflicts with an answer I gave earlier, because if one were to obtain a UK patent, that would extend not only through England and Wales but through to Scotland, so there are certain things that the Scottish people may be able to do, but there are other things that they may not because the Patents Act 1977 covers the whole of the four kingdoms.

With respect to the EU, there may be divergence in the way in which products from such precision bred organisms can be addressed. That may be controlled by plant varieties or by patents, but there might be other food regulations that kick in. The point is that certain paths will have to be unified—or are unified and cannot be changed. This Bill does not purport to change plant varieties or to change the patent law, so that is going to stay the same. But the ramifications of things that result from precision breeding may not be uniformly felt throughout the Union, because of other legislation.

[Deidre Brock]

Q People have contacted me about what happened with Monsanto, and I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the potential implications for that of anything in the Bill. I think Monsanto sued farmers because they retained seed from a crop, rather than buying seed again from Monsanto for the following year. Is there anything in the Bill that enables that? You are an expert on this subject and I would be interested to hear your thoughts.

Dr Edenborough: The Bill does not fundamentally affect patent law or plant breeders’ rights, but the deregulation aspect will allow people potentially to secure patent rights or plant breeders’ rights more readily in things that they would not otherwise have been able to secure rights in.

Let us say, for example, that you secure the rights to use—I hope this is a neutral example—a different type of mushroom. Once you have those rights, you can control various things: whether the mushrooms are grown and whether the products from the mushroom are sold. You might then say, “Well, I’m going to give those rights away free,” but you may have engineered the mushroom in such a way that there are other things for which you can then charge—for example, particular types of pesticide.

This is a mechanism whereby you might be able to get rights more readily. I might say up front that the rights I have obtained more readily because of this Bill I am not going to charge for, but that gives me a foot into the market whereby I can charge a higher price for other things that are related to the protected items. If they were unprotected, you could not form that link, but because of the protection that you have secured through this deregulation, you can form that link and therefore get an economic advantage eventually—down the line.

[Deidre Brock]

Fascinating. Thank you very much.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Q We spoke in a previous evidence session about the difficulty of codifying the beautiful complexity of biology into law, because biology in and of itself is not in a static state. I think the quote was, “Biology is not physics; it’s not a specific number.” So I am sympathetic to some of the comments that you made earlier. What I want to chase with you is what the consequences of the uncertainty in the drafting are. I cannot understand why someone would want to say that something has been genetically edited when it has not been, and I cannot understand why someone would want to say that something has not been genetically edited when it has been—and that is an expensive process. You have much more experience, so what are the consequences of the uncertainty in the drafting?

Dr Edenborough: The long and the short of it is that a single entity can say different things to different people in different contexts and therefore, in essence, confuse and confound people. You can secure rights in a place by saying one thing and then perhaps avoid liability in another place by saying the opposite.

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[Deidre Brock]

Q Ed, you seem to be suggesting that while the EU is retaining its approach to gene editing and GMO, the UK could negotiate on a product-by-product basis with the EU on any gene edited products it wished to export to the EU. Could you take us through that process? You say that FSA has to approve that. Would there be costs that could come about as a result?

Ed Barker: Yes. At this moment in time, if you are an exporter to the EU you make an application for approval of a GM product; these products are mostly feed and predominantly from north and south America. These go to the EU and the UK as applications for approval as GM. This is something that has happened for quite some time. Only very recently have the FSA in England and the FSS in Scotland approved seven or eight GM feed varieties that originated from north and south America, mostly maize and soy, I think. So that is the current situation we have.

Our understanding and reading is that, because the European Union currently considers gene editing to be equivalent to GM, if you were developing a really interesting new high-protein crop, such as rye or oilseed rape, and you wanted to try to export that to Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland or the rest of the EU, then it would be considered as GM, for which, as we know, there is a much higher bar for approval in the EU. It is difficult to determine the speed and the turnaround of approval of the application for that product for those markets. That is why it would be welcome, if and when the Bill progresses, for us to have a clearer position about what happens when a precision bred product is approved by the Secretary of State in England, so that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for International Trade very quickly try to establish approval for it in the European Union as a GM product, because that is how the EU defines such products. We would not be able to export there without that approval, so having that followed up as quickly as possible would be very significant for the market.

[Deidre Brock]

Q Without labelling and really strong traceability, what do we do regarding cross-contamination? How do we prove to Europe, while Europe is adopting its current approach, that the product has not been contaminated—I know that is a loaded word, but you know what I mean—by gene edited products when there is no traceability in the scheme and no labelling?

Ed Barker: Is the question how does an EU importer know that what they are importing is complaint with EU legislation with regards to GM approvals?

[Deidre Brock]

Yes.

Ed Barker: The challenge that we often have, particularly with some GM products but also with gene editing, is that testing is very limited, which is a concern. For example, at the moment the prevention of imports of unauthorised GM varieties from south America to the EU is largely done on a chain of custody basis, because the liabilities involved for importing something that does not fall within the remit of the regulatory compliance within the EU is extremely high. The major importers are large, multinational companies that have an extremely high compliance burden placed on them, with the chain of custody and contracts supporting that.

Inspections take place and each company will have very clear audit trails regarding those supply chains, to keep reinforcing that, and that is what we would expect to happen in this case as well. I suppose you are potentially moving into what would happen if an individual company wanted to export a product knowingly. That would fall under existing regulations regarding fraud and claims based on export notifications.

[The Chair]

I’m afraid that brings us to the end of the session. Thank you for your time and evidence.

Examination of Witness

Paul Temple gave evidence.

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[Daniel Zeichner]

Q You may or may not have heard the evidence from our previous witness from the Agricultural Industries Confederation, who expressed concern—pretty much using the language that you have just used—that we are out of kilter with other places, particularly Europe, and that that could have a dampening effect on these developments. Do you share that view?

Paul Temple: I very much share the view that if you are out of kilter, as a net importer, you risk causing yourself problems. Again, it is about following the science. I have been to America a number of times and I have sat with the USDA in Washington. Those guys have huge quantities of experience of managing a rapidly moving area of science. To my mind, they are the people with the most experience in this field. You should speak to them and ask them how they manage something that is actually being put out into fields now. You should go to the people with experience of managing it.

[Deidre Brock]

Q Mr Temple, you said that you do not want farmers to be out of kilter with the rest of the world, but as we have heard today, and as I have read—this is one of the Scottish Government’s concerns—we may be out of kilter with Europe’s approach to GM and gene edited foods. Does that concern you? Some of the farmers that you come into contact with must export their goods to Europe. We have heard that there is the possibility for products to get through on a product-by-product basis, but that sounds kind of costly and would take up a lot of time. Are you not concerned about that?

Paul Temple: I have always been concerned about the approach that Europe has taken. However, there seems to be a more conciliatory approach on the necessity of enabling the technology. We will see, but there does seem to be some element of progress. What I find really interesting is the gene edited wheat that has been put out in Argentina. It is in fields in New Zealand and Australia, and the US pretty much accepts it. That facilitates trade. When countries like Argentina, which are massive net exporters, are willing to adopt this technology and look at its safety, there is a huge amount we can learn from that.

[Deidre Brock]

Q Although we heard from earlier witnesses that places like Argentina seem to have rather more regulations in place than this Bill allows for. Does that not worry you a bit?

Paul Temple: I am worried about us immersing ourselves in introspection and not moving at pace, based on science. I say that because I have been watching crops grow using all sorts of breeding techniques for years, and I have stood watching from the sidelines. I am slightly terrified that, if we do not get on with this, I will remain watching it from the sidelines. I say that because I am probably more aware than most of how vulnerable our production actually is and how necessary it is to have access to the breeding techniques and research in this field. I hoped that one of the things that Brexit might allow is a swifter ability to look at the science behind this and give those involved in research and breeding the ability to get on with it, on a science-based approach. There is always a concern when you get out of kilter with other countries.

[Deidre Brock]

Q Do you think this approach will in any way make up for the impact of Brexit? Do you agree with the Government’s thinking that it might make some headway, in terms of the big impact on farming and agriculture from Brexit?

Paul Temple: Put Brexit to one side. This science is just too important to be immersed in those kinds of things. I am faced with a huge rise in my cost of production. I am looking constantly to reduce pesticides and fertiliser and to give my crops the ability to cope with the extremes of weather. I have a six-course rotation, and at the end of that six-course rotation, yet again I will need something that responds to the requirement to produce more against the rising cost of production. I see this, from a science point of view, as really important. From a UK point of view, we should be able to respond a little quicker because we do not have the decision-marking chains that you have in Brussels. I have seen the process and I know how it slows things down. I simply hope that we are now capable of responding to the science more quickly.

[The Chair]

If there are no more questions, I thank you for your time and evidence and we will move on to our next witness.

Examination of Witness.

Ross Houston gave evidence.

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[Daniel Zeichner]

Q That is fine. I am certainly not laying it on you; it is down to us to come up with the answer to that one.

Ross Houston: Yes, but my practical point would be—this is the way we think about it—that we are aiming to ensure that there would be sterility of the farmed strains, and at least awareness of that potential risk of genetic introgression with wild strains, and essentially to eliminate that.

[Deidre Brock]

Q You will be aware, of course, that the Scottish Government want to wait until the EU’s consultation on gene edited products is complete, because they wish to retain regulatory alignment with the EU and there are concerns about the export of salmon, which is a huge sector for Scotland—and for the UK, for that matter—to Europe, and to France in particular. Given that you are in the sector and close to it, can you tell us about your concerns about that potential impact? If the EU retains its current opposition to gene editing, what would be the impact on UK products trying to get into the EU?

Ross Houston: As I said, it is welcome that we are having this discussion, but of course most of the aquaculture in the UK is salmon farming, and most salmon farming occurs in Scotland. So from our point of view it is disappointing that we are not having similar science-based and open debates about the risks and benefits of these approaches in Scotland. The Scottish Government are also, via the Sustainable Aquaculture Innovation Centre, funding research that is looking to use CRISPR precision breeding technologies to tackle some of the sustainability concerns of the industry, such as resistance to sea lice and viral disease. Therefore, I think it would be welcome if we could have a similar discussion in Scotland.

[Deidre Brock]

Q Would you accept that, given the importance of Europe to the salmon export trade, it makes sense to wait to see what Europe is doing? I believe there will be some sort of response by next year. I am worried about the impact that moving ahead of Europe will have on salmon in particular.

Ross Houston: There is maybe a double-edged sword there. The trade is not only with the EU, it is also with other countries. We are an international company; we have operations in Iceland and Chile, and we are selling our genetically improved salmon eggs to a very large number of countries. My concern would be that if we do not start having that discussion with some urgency, including in Scotland, then, bearing in mind that Scotland and the UK are at the forefront of R&D in this field, we might fall behind in the innovation landscape. The benefits of that R&D and innovation might impact on elsewhere in the world, while we are taking that cautious approach.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Q I was reading earlier this week about how in Japan they have been using CRISPR to change Japanese sea bream. I think the technicality is that you end up with bream that have 20% more meat, because it knocks out a protein that means muscle growth is supressed. Basically, there is less muscle in the fish and presumably more fatty meat—if that is what you call it on a fish. You mentioned the impact on human health earlier, and you mentioned allergies—that was with CRISPR rather than with gene editing—but to what extent do you see us getting to a situation where the finished product, the fish, is so changed that it is nutritionally a different product? To what extent do you think we would need labelling for that? Allergies are one thing, but I wondered about it from a nutritional point of view. People are often told to eat fish. Should it be marketed as something that is different?

Ross Houston: Good question. I was using CRISPR and gene editing as synonymous—it is a gene edited product in Japan with the red sea bream. Those early examples are interesting, because they are markers that show that the regulatory environment is changing in countries such as Japan and some of the Americas. From our point of view, what we are doing here is running very advanced scientifically based breeding programmes. We are keeping 300 families of Atlantic salmon. With them we are pedigree recording, recording the genotype in each year, and recording lots of measurements relating to growth, disease resistance and fillet quality. We are doing that routinely, all the time. We are monitoring the important traits of our fish.

The R&D we are involved in is targeting gene editing to tackle issues such as resistance to sea lice in the salmon, resistance to a viral disease called infectious salmon anemia, resistance to a viral disease called infectious pancreatic necrosis—those are the targets of our research and development. In the foreseeable future—I could also go further than that—I do not see that we would be doing something similar to what you suggest in our breeding programme. We are able to improve growth and fillet characteristics through the process of routine measurement, family selection and scientifically based breeding programmes. It is quite straightforward to do it that way, and therefore it just would not be a sensible target for the technology in our case. We also see the public acceptance and customer preferences. The use of precision breeding technology to develop traits that have concurrent animal welfare, environment and economic benefits has to be what we are moving towards.

This sort of edit, where you are knocking out a myostatin gene and allowing for faster fillet growth, just is not on our radar. On the specific point about changing fillet characteristics, if you were perhaps trying to use gene editing to modify, for example, the fatty acid profile of the fish, with potential health effects for humans—hopefully it would target positive health effects—there might be an argument for it there. But I do not see the need with the sort of traits we are focused on and targeting; I do not see that the product would be any different, other than having the favourable trait of disease resistance, for example.

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[Daniel Zeichner]

Not in yours, but possibly in others who are less public spirited.

Nigel Moore: I think the critical answer to the question is that public confidence and reassurance is at the heart of the Bill, in the definition of a precision bred organism as something that could occur in nature or by traditional breeding. There are many genome editing methods that can create additional changes. Absolutely the key step to generating public confidence and reassurance is the recognition that the techniques that can create those sorts of changes do not create additional risk. The ACRE guidance on qualifying higher plants that accompanies the Genetically Modified Organisms (Deliberate Release) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2002 gave an extremely good evidence-based approach to which types of techniques create changes that could occur in nature.

The question is about an imprecise definition. We need the additional information to say, “These are the techniques that we confirm as PBOs—they are fine.” Public reassurance is at the heart of this and we must make sure that we only put into this regulatory regime things that have the same risk profile as traditional breeding. What is clear from listening to the discussion today is how little information is known about what sorts of genetic changes happen in conventional breeding, or about the scale of those genetic changes.

I brought with me the AHDB recommended list. I will not go into it, but if we were to look at it, we would see that there are 38 varieties of wheat on the recommended list for the UK. They have many different characteristics, including resistances, yields, qualities for processing and vastly different protein contents—there is a range of about 30% of different protein contents. You can see null-lox barleys that have a different framing characteristic in beer making. You can see non-GN barleys that do not create carcinogens in whisky distilling. There are many food-safety single issues all in this vast range of genetic resources that have been created by traditional breeding. There is a wide range.

People should have confidence that all the food and all the breeding has delivered not risk, but improvement, safety and better environmental outcomes compared with old varieties. There is a big misunderstanding about the position of precision breeding. The public confidence question is about information, education and transparency. For me, that is at the heart of what we are doing here.

Public confidence should also be triggered by a recent study on the socioeconomic impact of plant breeding, run by HFFA Research, and which studied all of Europe. It showed that over the last 20 years in the UK alone, breeding development has saved 1.8 million hectares from agriculture and delivered about 16 million tonnes fewer CO₂ emissions than the same production at the same level 20 years ago. That is with no more fertiliser, no more crop protection and no more land use, so there is a huge benefit to the public. Can we keep pace with climate change, and with pathogen development on stripe rusts in wheat and so on, without going faster? We must go faster. Without new technology and innovation, I do not feel very safe. The world gets warmer, we get hungrier and we need innovation—and we need to do it fast.

Professor Caccamo: I will be very brief. Labelling the technology would be a mistake. It would undermine the principle of the Bill, because these technologies should be indistinguishable from traditional breeding or something that would happen in nature. But it is also important to stress that these technologies are actually more precise, as the Bill says. Therefore, we are in a position whereby we can advance genetic benefits much faster. Trying to identify the technology through a labelling system would probably achieve the opposite with the public, because it would probably raise concerns about why we need to do that. I will leave it there.

[Deidre Brock]

Q I absolutely agree with you, Mr Moore. Public confidence and transparency around all of this is vital, but we have heard criticisms today that the category of “precision bred organisms” is not recognised anywhere else in the world and is not based on scientific criteria, which could potentially present problems for trade in these goods. Do you know where the term “precision bred” came from?

Nigel Moore: I think we have developed it here, but the concept of things that could occur in nature or traditional breeding is exactly the same concept that is being discussed with the Commission. Health Canada has also come up with a similar concept. Does it have the same three-letter acronym? No, but that concept is the common concept.

Professor Caccamo: I believe we are dealing with an anomaly, because what we are doing here is removing genome edited crops from the definition of genetically modified organisms. Countries that have adopted the technology have done a proactive measurement from scratch, whereby they considered genome editing to be a new technology that could bring new crops. The European ruling brought us into a position whereby we need to make an exception. That is the result we see in the Bill, which I consider, as I said, an anomaly.

[Deidre Brock]

Q Okay. I want to ask about clauses 6 to 9, which explain that applications for precision bred confirmation will be made to the Secretary of State by giving a marketing notice, and that he will then refer them to the advisory committee. For what seems to a layperson to be a fairly complex arrangement, it is rather lacking in detail. Do you feel confident that there will be sufficient protections in place, such as monitoring of persons who wish to apply for those confirmations? Do you have any concerns about that? Do you think that is an area that could be strengthened somewhat?

Professor Harwood: I can have a go with that one. To be honest, this is obviously an area that is still being discussed. I fully support the notification system and the transparency, which is absolutely the right thing to do. Exactly what will be required in the notification is still being discussed, and it is very important that it captures the crucial information that would be needed to highlight whether there was anything that might just mean that that particular example needed an extra risk assessment rather than a light touch. It is something that I think is being discussed, and perhaps it just needs a little bit of extra detail.

[Deidre Brock]

Q Would you like to see further detail in the Bill?

Professor Harwood: To be honest, I am not an expert on that. I would not like to comment on whether that sort of detail belongs in the Bill.

[Deidre Brock]

Q Okay. We have heard some criticism that there is not sufficient detail on the make-up of the advisory committee, for example, and concerns about not knowing who and what might be discussed on the board or the committee.

Professor Martin: I have a little bit of experience of the notification for being able to do a field trial. The notification was very easy. I talked to my Italian collaborators and asked, “Can you get regulatory approval for growing plants outside in Italy?” and they said, “It will take two years.” It took me two days to notify DEFRA and I had to wait 20 days for that to be approved. However, it was thorough. They asked me about the type of information I had presented in a scientific paper and had peer-reviewed. It was based on strong scientific evidence. I felt that it was absolutely fair and just. It was fantastic that it was so quick, but it was absolutely right that they asked, “Have you shown that there is no foreign DNA?”, for example. That is the definition of the qualified—

[Deidre Brock]

Q So, 22 days from your application going in—to DEFRA officials, not Ministers?

Professor Martin: You have to wait 20 days before you can start growing the plants outside after you have had your notification approved.

[Deidre Brock]

Oh, right, okay. I see.

[Kate Green]

Q Just a follow-up to that: why can’t you do it for 20 days? What is happening during those 20 days?

Professor Martin: It gives them a bit of time to look at your form.