Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Sixth sitting)

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 5th July 2022 Public Bill Committees

I completely understand the intentions of the hon. Member for Cambridge, but we have welfare legislation in place, and the Bill is intended to work alongside that and to enable responsible innovation. We will ensure that we work alongside all the experts and stakeholders previously mentioned to make sure that we get this right. [Interruption.] He looks slightly sceptical, and I understand that I am asking for his trust, but we are looking to those other stakeholders to help us build the technical details that can give both him and the broader public that reassurance.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

The Minister has gone into a lot of detail already as to why she does not support Labour’s amendments. I am not sure that I will be able to change her mind or whether she has another speech put to one side in case I make such a compelling argument—I suspect not—but I will get it on the record anyway.

My starting point is that I was rather concerned about how often she mentioned regulation, further consideration, talking to stakeholders and all those things that are yet to be configured. Actually, we have time to get the Bill right, to get things on the face of it and not to rush into it, rather than having such reliance on secondary legislation. We have made that point already and will, no doubt, continue to do so as we go through the Bill. However, it is a major concern.

I want to say once again for the record that I see that there are positives that could result from gene editing of animals. I am not totally against that. We have talked about improving resistance to disease, resistance to heat and the ability to breed selectively by gender. For example, 29 million male chicks are killed each year in the UK—in the UK it is by gassing, but in other countries it is maceration, which is a pretty horrible process by which they go along a conveyor belt and end up in a grinder that shreds them to bits—so we could avoid that. Interestingly, although people are keen to talk about how we are ahead of the field in animal welfare, parts of Germany have banned culling of male chicks, France has put a bit of money into it, and Germany introduced a ban at the start of the year. It is now all in-ovo testing, so editing the gene might be a quicker and cheaper way of doing it. However, let us not pin all our hopes on this Bill. That is something we could be doing without gene editing. I am surprised that we are not following France and Germany’s lead.

Another advantage we heard about is avoiding the need for dehorning, by preventing the growth of horns. That is all very good stuff, but we also heard about concerns, including the increased yields in particular. That is something that I would be very concerned about. Peter Stevenson from Compassion in World Farming said:

“The science about the detrimental impact of selective breeding on just about every main farm species is utterly clear.”––[Official Report, Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Public Bill Committee, 30 June 2022; c. 101, Q163.]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge said, some of the things that I have mentioned in the course of debate I will mention again in a moment.

The National Farmers Union said that the Bill is not the place to consider animal welfare and positive or negative outcomes in that respect, because we have legislation such as the Animal Welfare Act and the farm animal welfare codes. I have already made clear my doubts about the effectiveness of that. Some of the witnesses that we heard from argued very convincingly that the existing animal welfare regime does not offer enough protections. Peter Stevenson also said that

“it is vital that there is something in this Bill to protect animal welfare, because the current legislation…has really very little on breeding, which is why we have all these problems.”—[Official Report, Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Public Bill Committee, 30 June 2022; c. 108, Q173.]

I have already mentioned the secondary legislation. Amendment 13 is very important, because if applications are being made for the marketing of gene edited animal products, we need oversight of the related regulations. Otherwise there is a risk of a lax regulatory regime that lets applicants mark their own homework.

--- Later in debate ---

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

I am listening hard to the hon. Lady’s speech and I wholeheartedly agree with her about some of the welfare issues she has described. Does she agree, however, that the Bill offers the opportunity to solve some of the problems that she has identified? The problem with natural breeding is that we effectively chuck everything up in the air, and then it comes back together with one part from the mum and one from the dad. That means that when we select for improved production, we cannot also make sure that we are selecting for health and fitness. We are stuck with the selection—for example, we may select for a dog whose face gets smaller and smaller. I understand what the hon. Lady is saying about making sure that we do not use gene editing just to target individual production methods, but does she share my excitement that the Bill offers the opportunity to fix some of the inherent deficits that traditional breeding has imposed on animals—animals that I know many farmers work with every day, and love?

[Kerry McCarthy]

My concern is that that is not spelled out in the Bill, and it goes back to our argument about the public benefit. I would be far more comfortable if the Bill spelled out what the hon. Lady has described and made it clear that that is what it is designed to achieve. The ongoing welfare of the animal should be one of the factors to be taken into account when deciding whether to approve applications. The Bill is not clear about that. Market forces being what they are, some people will want to use the Bill as an opportunity to increase yields.

[Katherine Fletcher]

I understand that the hon. Lady is leery about market consequences, and we should always have a good look at them. Some of the welfare issues that we think of as distressing also have a financial cost attached to them—increased vets’ charges; increased housing requirements; and increased vets’ visits. Would the hon. Lady risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater by being specific about the Bill, because a happy, healthy animal that is productive and fecund is an economic positive for the individuals who seek to farm them?

[Kerry McCarthy]

One might think so, but consider the lifespan of cows and that fact that they become infertile pretty quickly. One would think that logic would suggest that a farmer would want a cow that they did not literally milk for everything, and that lived a longer, healthier and fertile life. That is not what happens on some farms. Some farmers view the economic advantage to them as getting as much out of a cow as possible in its shorter lifespan. We want to encourage best practice, and I am not casting aspersions on farmers who want to do the right thing, but we know that big market forces are at work, particularly in chicken production. In fact, wherever products are sold in bulk and consumed in vast quantities, some players in that market will not have animal welfare in mind.

I am conscious of time, so to conclude, amendment 7 calls for welfare reports to be submitted to the Secretary of State to consider whether yields would be increased and whether that would lead to suffering. That goes to the nub of the issue. I will not repeat what I said earlier, but if the development of gene editing led to the phase out of some of the diseases that affect animal welfare, I would like more reassurances about what that would mean for increased density and animals kept in cramped conditions, and so on. If we have a stronger animal, that might mean that it is thought they can withstand such treatment.

I think the welfare provisions are too weak, and far too much is being left to regulations and consideration at some point in the future. The Bill should have been put on hold while we made more inquiries and gathered more information. That would have meant that we were discussing a fully rounded Bill, and that we knew what we were likely to get from it.

[Jo Churchill]

I am content to note those points.