Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 15th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

We have heard today of the potential benefits and of how gene editing could have a role to play in reducing our reliance on fertilisers and pesticides and in creating food that is resistant to drought or food that is more nutritious. We have heard about vitamin D in tomatoes, and there has been a long-running conversation about vitamin A being added to golden rice, although it has yet to live up to its billing.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) that the Bill is very thin on the regulatory framework. Perhaps the Government ought to have put those measures in place before steaming ahead with developing these products. His points on labelling were well made, too. The concerns about cross-contamination and support for organic food producers and consumers are valid.

The Soil Association has raised concerns about the commercialisation of crops and tells us that just four companies control more than 60% of the global seed supply. I do not have time to go into detail on those concerns, but they need to be flagged up in Committee. I went to talk to farmers in El Salvador after the Central America free trade agreement, and they want to support organic farms and natural seeds but were told they cannot because, under the free trade agreement, alternatives from Monsanto and others have to be allowed into the market. I would be very concerned if such a situation were allowed to develop here at the expense of people who want to go down the organic route.

The most problematic part of the Bill concerns the gene editing of animals. I accept there are some positives, such as helping to reduce our reliance on antibiotics, but there are other ways to do that. Other countries have been much better than us in restricting the routine overuse of antibiotics.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) said the Bill is trying to tackle the symptoms, not the causes. If not for the ever-growing intensification and industrialisation of farming, where animals are crammed together in unsanitary conditions, we would not need to rely on the routine use of antibiotics, as too many farmers do.

We have had an interesting debate on whether we could use technology to suppress the birth of male chicks. At the moment, 29 million male chicks are killed by the poultry industry each year, and 7 billion are killed globally. They are fed into maceration machines—mincing machines—because they do not lay eggs but, again, other countries such as Germany, France and Sweden are already doing things to stop chick shredding without resorting to gene editing.

I am concerned by what the Secretary of State said in response to the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) about yields. He did not refute her concern about the Government saying the Bill will enable the development of

“precision-bred plants and animals which will bolster food production”

and “drive economic growth.”

Existing livestock farming methods have already led to the creation of animals that are radically different from their original natural forms. We see turkeys and chickens that are bred to be so heavy that they cannot support their own weight on their legs; the milk yields of cows have more than doubled in the past 40 years, to about 22 litres per day in the UK—that is not natural; and we know that cows, as well as suffering from mastitis, now become infertile extremely quickly from intensive milking. Their life cycle has been reduced from 20 years in the wild to about three or four when raised in intensive farming conditions. Again, the causes, rather than the symptoms, ought to be tackled by the Government as well.