Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 21st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lilley. I do not suppose anyone in this House will be surprised to know that I support the Bill and everything it is trying to achieve. Some of your Lordships will remember that I moved the amendment to the Agriculture Bill that resulted in the consultation that has brought us to this point.

I declare my relevant interests. I am still loosely involved in a family farming enterprise growing crops and rearing livestock. I am also chairman of the trustees of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, where our mantra is helping people and nature thrive together. Furthermore, I co-chair the All-Party Group on Agriculture and Food for Development, whose primary purpose is to bring improved agriculture to the smallholders of the developing world, notably in sub-Saharan Africa.

It is with that latter interest in mind that I stress how crucial it is that we bring urgent help to the African lady farmers to enable them to plant improved seeds across a wide range of different crops. There is such a lot of work to be done. In Africa, we do not have time for the 20 to 25 harvests needed for the random chance mutations that traditional breeding provides. We urgently and desperately need to make multifaceted improvements to a whole of range of crops to avoid the devastating effects of climate change. Bear in mind that Africa has the world’s fastest-growing human population. Therefore, unless we act quickly, we will undoubtedly be responsible for human tragedy on a very large scale.

We have to ask ourselves: how do we breed plants that can resist the many different diseases and pests present in every country without having to put more chemicals into the environment? One of the problems in the developing world is that many farmers are only semi-literate and semi-numerate, so chemicals are often used far too liberally, sometimes to the detriment of the farmer’s health herself.

How do we breed plants for hot countries which can resist the droughts brought about by our climate change? Irrigation schemes are expensive and use valuable water. Seeds are much cheaper, so you can breed either a plant that requires less water or, more often, one that comes to harvest two or three weeks earlier, during which time its older counterpart might have shrivelled and died.

How do we breed a rice that resists the flooding of Pakistan or Bangladesh? Plants can be bred to stay alive underwater for several days or, when threatened by water, to spurt upwards to keep their heads above the flood waters. Both are being developed. How do we breed a maize that is salt-tolerant, or a cassava plant that does not have to be dried and processed within 24 hours, or a cocoa plant resistant to mildew or phytophthora? How do we produce crops less susceptible to the dreadful post-harvest losses you get in Africa? Perhaps more importantly, how do we breed crops that give children access to vital vitamins and minerals, such as zinc and iron, deficits of which can cause blindness, stunting and cognitive degeneration? We need precision breeding, without the dangers of too many off-target characteristics that are inherent in the random mutations of traditional breeding processes. We need it in both crops and animals.

Coming back to the UK, we also need our own new varieties of crops to combat our own climate change. We need new varieties that can hopefully be produced with greatly reduced, or even a total absence of, chemical applications, and which therefore can be grown in harmony with the biodiversity that we so desperately need. One of the major plusses about inserting gene resistance to pests is that it is better for biodiversity. Why is that so? It is because, unlike with chemical sprays, it does not kill the pest; it just protects the crop from the pest, which can go on thriving in conservation headlands or neighbouring habitats.

We can also, hopefully, breed new varieties which can give us the improved nutrition that so many of our population aspire to—perhaps a wheat with minimal gluten content to help coeliacs, for instance, or varieties that have a longer shelf life in our supermarkets and thus reduce the need for plastic. The advantages of such precision breeding are huge, and the disadvantages seem so much more remote than traditional breeding practices. All the projects I have mentioned are at various stages of development across the world, and in my view, are safer than the random mutations used in traditional breeding, and other forms of breeding, as other noble Lords have mentioned, such as using gamma rays and so on. For those, it can often be necessary to remove hundreds of plants with undesirable, off-target characteristics. The backcrossing in genetic breeding is quite limited, compared to normal breeding.

I turn for a moment to the gene editing of animals, because there is currently a slight weakness in the Bill in that area. First, I stress that, for the avoidance of suffering of animals, precision breeding is vital—not the cruelty that some people might think or imply. It reduces the off-target characteristics that other forms of breeding are more likely to produce, some of which might be harmful to the animal, as the noble Lord, Lord Trees, mentioned. Genetically editing a salmon egg, for instance, is not cruel. Rather, if, for example, you can increase the mature salmon’s resilience to sea lice, as they are striving to do at Roslin, you will be doing both the salmon and its surrounding environment a heap of good as there will be no need for environmentally damaging treatments to remove the lice.

With mammals, you also take the egg, treat it, and then reinsert it into the mother— a process no crueller than IVF in humans. If, for instance, you thus increase resistance to PRRS in pigs, as again they are striving to do at Roslin, then you are actually reducing the enormous suffering and deaths from this appalling respiratory disease. Moreover, if you alter the genes of one animal, you should—and I agree that there is doubt about this, but the tests are going on—get hundreds or even thousands of their progeny with the same characteristics without touching them in any way. Breeding resistance to disease into future generations is much more sensible than the ongoing use of antibiotics, medicines or even vaccines as the best way to help animals live pain-free and disease-free lives.

Nevertheless, there is one point that I noted was raised in the other place, and was not, in my view, satisfactorily resolved there. The process for authorisation and licensing of new breeds of animals is, as yet, not very clear and probably not wide enough in its remit. Who or what is the animal welfare advisory body? Who is on it and how independent is it? What is its full remit?

I realise that, even before this Bill, the existing law insists that every single step of the process of holding and breeding an animal has already to be licensed, checked and inspected many, many times for even the mildest form of suffering on the part of the animal. That is all good and as it should be. As I said, that already happens and there is little need for us to reinvent the wheel. To my mind, however, there is too much responsibility, certainly in the latter stages of the proposed development process, for the notifiers themselves to keep the welfare advisory body informed. It appears that the notifiers are in the driving seat.

Clause 14 states only that regulations “may”—and, as the Minister knows, we tend not to like that word in Bills before this House—

“make provision for requiring the notifier”

to provide the Secretary of State with information about an animal’s progeny during periods prescribed by the regulations. I for one would like more clarity on those processes in the Bill.

What worries me more is who will determine whether the newly bred characteristic enhances the quality of life of the animal and its descendants on the farm. In other words, how far down the line does the welfare body’s remit extend? We do not want animals being bred, for instance, so that they can be ever more densely packed in inhumane conditions. Of course, there is nothing about precision breeding that makes this more or less likely than the traditional random breeding practices already in existence, but if we are going to make new trait developments easier, then we want to make sure that we get the right trait developments. So there is a small bit of tightening up to be done on the Bill at this point.

However, I end by repeating that I cannot endorse more strongly everything this Bill is trying to achieve. It has never been more important, as our UKCEH mantra says, for people and nature to thrive and prosper in harmony. If that is to happen, we must allow science and precision breeding to help us make it possible.