Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Lord Roborough Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 21st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roborough (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for this Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill, which has driven me to speak for the first time. I will begin by expressing my thanks, first to noble Lords from all parts of the House who have gone out of their way to introduce themselves with great warmth and encouragement, and, secondly, to the doorkeepers, clerks and staff, who have been generous in their welcome and unfailingly helpful with advice and directions.

This Bill is a natural place for my maiden speech, as it is a subject on which I have a little knowledge and in which I declare an interest. I grew up on a dairy farm in Devon. In 2015, we restructured the farm to move away from high yield and high input to a more regenerative, lower-yielding system. The results have been positive for animal health and longevity, working conditions, soil health and profitability.

My family have been Members of this House or the other place for the last seven generations. We arrived in the United Kingdom in the 18th century as an immigrant Jewish family with Portuguese roots. Our prior background was in trade and finance, which we continued and became landowners and politicians. I have followed in that tradition despite the dilution of that genetic inheritance over two centuries of imprecise breeding.

I hope that there are areas other than agriculture where I may make some contribution. I have worked within financial services for the last 30 years as an investor in companies across the technology, manufacturing and commodity industries. I hope this gives some perspective on where this country’s threats and opportunities lie now and in future. I was also a designated senior manager, as defined by the Financial Conduct Authority, and so have experience of the City’s regulatory environment.

For the last four to five years, every meeting with senior management of companies around the world included a discussion of their emissions reduction strategy. The evidence of increasing atmospheric carbon and consequential global warming is irrefutable. While we cannot know with certainty how much the world will warm, or even what the precise outcomes will be, a substantial part of that forecast range could have severely negative consequences for our species. We have a responsibility to take action to reduce and remove those possibilities. My own response has been to focus on large-scale afforestation and to cofound a global trading platform for not just carbon offsets but all aspects of natural capital. As much as 25% of the required global reduction in atmospheric carbon can come from re-evaluating land use, and I am playing an active role in that.

That brings me to the genetic technology Bill. This legislation enables faster development of a technology that will deliver valuable benefits. Greater food security is the ultimate prize. That in turn will allow us to focus more on rebuilding the stock of carbon that has been released from harvested forests, damaged peatland and degraded soils.

Global food consumption has grown at close to 1% per annum for several decades, on a broadly static amount of farmed land. Those demands have been met through technology. The largest contributor is the selective breeding of crops and animals to enhance desirable traits and eliminate harmful ones. This Bill encourages the acceleration of the rate at which and the precision with which we can focus on the traits we desire and will allow for less land to be used in agriculture.

If I look to my own herds, were all my cows blessed with similar genetic traits to my best cow, I could raise my milk output by 23%, without material change to land use or carbon emissions. While we breed every year to increase the prevalence of those best traits in our herd, it is an imprecise and slow iterative process. Precision breeding offers the potential for others to help us accelerate that process dramatically, using DNA that is already present within the species.

Prioritising animal welfare is central to any livestock farming business. We care about our animals and also know that no livestock farming system can be successful without putting animal welfare first. Standards of animal welfare in the United Kingdom are already among the highest in the world, and this Bill introduces a process for additional safeguards on declaration and ongoing monitoring to address others’ concerns. That makes this country one of the most suitable globally for pursuing precision-breeding technology.

It has been an honour to have had the chance to contribute to this debate. I look forward to making further contributions to the House’s work, hopefully with less trepidation in future.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Lord Roborough Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 25th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trees (CB)]

My Lords, I will make one or two points, particularly with respect to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Winston.

Regarding imprecision, conventional breeding is totally imprecise. Mankind has been breeding animals for thousands of years, just looking grossly at the phenotype, the way animals look and so on. Recent research on pigs has shown that if you breed two pigs —a boar and a sow—and do whole-genome on sequencing on all their progeny, there will be at least 100 mutations in the DNA of each of those progenies which are not represented in either parent. Every time we breed every animal now, on every farm, in every house, in every stable, we have a very imprecise system which is constantly throwing up genetic variation.

Applying this more precise breeding will be done under very controlled conditions in research establishments which will be thoroughly looking at the changes in the genomes of the animals long before they are released. Remember that when we market animals for breeding, we control the breeding. We have had assurances that mechanisms such as gene drive will not be included in this legislation. Every precision-bred animal that is genetically edited and put on the market will be bred by humans controlling that breeding.

Lastly, regarding ethics, there are counter-ethics, and the bus has already left the station on this. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, mentioned the work on PRRS. There is some very encouraging work coming through which indicates that we may be able to create poultry with a degree of resistance to avian influenza. An Israeli research group has published information on being able to produce only female chicks from layer breeder flocks, thus preventing the unnecessary destruction of half the chicks born for laying purposes because they are male. When we have the potential to reduce the burden of disease in animals which are under our control, is it ethical not to take up that opportunity?

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a dairy farmer and as an investor in a number of agriculture-related businesses around the world. I also declare negligible scientific credentials, unlike many noble Lords who have spoken.

However, I believe that it is essential that farmed animals are included in the Bill without undue delay, and I am very much against any amendment which delays or removes these animals. I have previously mentioned in this House that I could raise the output of my herd by 23% were all my cows blessed with the same genetics as my best cow. As noble Lords have already mentioned, there are disease benefits. Another example is the Roslin Institute’s engagement in gene editing of salmon, which improves resistance to infectious pancreatic necrosis viruses. These are meaningful benefits and I agree that they also improve animal welfare.

I would also add that I do not entirely recognise the world that was described by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, earlier. Agricultural productivity continues to increase globally, powered largely by ongoing plant and animal selective breeding. I believe that we have an obligation to unleash this technology of precision breeding to further increase production globally and support a growing global population.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, I wonder if he might be kind enough to comment on this, seeing as he wanted to breed his best cow with all the other cows to reduce genetic diversity. Can he tell me what happens if a virus comes along to which that herd is susceptible? What do you do then? That is the problem.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

As a non-scientist, I am not sure that I have a good answer to that. I would rely on the vets.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)]

I think my noble friend is quite right: we will depend on increasing productivity and will be able to do that only by breeding. The whole point of the Bill is selective breeding; actually, it is precision breeding. The noble Lord may well have this nightmare that we are releasing something ghastly into the world; I do not believe that is true at all. It is done because of objectives in the breeding programme, which is precise. This is just the sort of thing that I do—and I declare my interest as a horticulturalist, as the House well knows—when we are breeding bulbs and daffodils. But this is more serious; this is not about domestic gardening but is about feeding the world and making it possible for the diversity that exists in gene stock to be harnessed for greater productivity.