Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 21st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, in general I support the Bill. I am afraid that whenever the word “genetic” appears some people, organisations and supermarkets run a country mile. It is no good supporters of the Bill complaining and moaning about this. I remember my experiences in my early days at the old MAFF in 1998-99, when the issue arose. We all recall that, at that time, GMO tomato paste was on the shelves outselling non-GMO tomato paste 2:1. Then the anti-science, semi-religious zealots got to work.

That is the history, but there is a fundamental lesson regarding new technology and food that I took away and tried to use later at Defra and at the FSA, which is that the consumer is king and that the consumer benefits always need to be up front, rather than the producer benefits. I was always reinforced in that view by the late Professor Derek Burke, a former chair of the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes. His essay in 1998 in Consuming Passions: Food in the Age of Anxiety, published by Mandolin on behalf of the Times Higher Education Supplement, is worth a read by the Minister. Professor Burke’s four key points on new products were: that they must be technically possible; they must offer advantage to the consumer; the regulatory process must be rigorous, open and universal; and the consumer must be offered a choice, at least initially. It is worth putting on record the very last sentence of his essay:

“Technical skills will not be sufficient on their own to turn this exciting and powerful new science into products and processes; scientists will have to take the public with them.”


That is a key lesson.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, that there is little wrong with GMO techniques. Some 250 million people in the United States of America have been our living experiment for about 25 years. As far as I am concerned, there has not been a single problem regarding food safety over that time. I accept that there have been some environmental issues, but I do not keep comparing the prairies of the USA with our tiny, people-dense island. They are not the same.

The science of breeding has never been more vital with climate change, as others have said. There will be new diseases in food crops and food production animals that we have not encountered before. Confidence in the current and proposed regulatory system is vital.

I am not in favour of gold-plating but, where food is concerned, the key aspects for consumer confidence are openness and transparency. In this respect, Defra blotted its copybook with the recent Public Accounts Committee report on Weybridge animal health laboratory, which has obviously been facing hard times since new Labour. That needs to be put in order PDQ, otherwise confidence in Defra and its scientists will be damaged.

Defra and British Sugar, whose submission I read, have all set out the potential benefits, which certainly relate to consumers. Not least of these is the use of fewer pesticides and fertilisers. In former days, if we could produce fewer pesticides and use them less, there would be less chance of residues in the final product. I have not checked recently, but I am not so sure whether we check for residues in products as quickly and frequently as we used to.

There is one other issue that I read about. The Royal Society sent a very short, readable one-page briefing on this, with some questions which I will ask the Minister to answer in Committee.

I am going to raise only three general issues. The first is with regard to animals being included in the first place. These concerns have to be satisfied. I can see the benefit for food production animals—I am less concerned about the others—but the fact is that we and our key trading partners have different rules on food of animal origin, and rightly so. The noble Lord, Lord Trees, raised the issue last week at Question Time after a Question literally about the benefit of the technology in enabling our food birds to avoid avian flu. There is quite clearly a benefit to the animals, but there is also a real benefit to the public. There is no question about that. There are also potential benefits to the pig industry.

Less disease in food production animals caused by either poor husbandry or climate change will directly benefit consumers, but we must not use the technology to cover up poor husbandry. That is the reason we do not want the material the Americans want to give us: because the washing of chickens in chemicals is only to cover up their poor husbandry. That is the reality. As my noble friend said, if this is all about ever faster-growing broilers on weaker and thinner legs, forget it; I am not going down that route. I have been in chicken sheds with 30,000 birds that were well looked after with techniques to find out whether they are ill. The techniques that can be used beggar belief. But if it is all about fatter, faster-growing birds on legs they cannot stand on, I for one am not having that.

My second general issue—and this is where I am going to fall out with some people—is traceability. To simply claim that “general food law requires traceability”, which is an excuse I saw offered by one scientist, is an unprofessional cop-out. As such, I am persuaded that, from a consumer point of view—remember that—labelling is a must. It is not only that consumers are entitled to know; we have to take direct account of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act. Like it or not, we have devolution.

As far as I am concerned, the Food Information Regulations do not cover enough, because they do not cover methods of slaughter. I would add that in if I could, but I suspect that this is not the Bill in which to do that.

Innovative techniques which claim to improve foods have nothing whatever to fear from openness and transparency. If there is a sniff of less openness and less transparency, confidence disappears. We know what happens when that occurs: we get crisis after crisis, built on false evidence.

I looked at the FSA board papers because I have had no briefing from the FSA, which I am a bit sad to say, and neither has anyone else so far as I know. I looked at its board papers from September; this was discussed at the September meeting. Buried right at the end were the results of its 4,000 sample opinion poll. I will quote only one figure: 78% of consumers thought it important to know that the food was as a result of precision breeding. You cannot dismiss that—it is overwhelming by any stretch of the imagination. If those consumers think they are not being told information, confidence will go out the door.

My third issue is governance. Parliamentary counsel has again, at the Government’s orders, produced another Bill which removes powers from Parliament—not this House but both Houses—to give to Ministers. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, on which I serve, has not considered this Bill, but I am assuming we will do so before Committee starts. A Bill with three Henry VIII clauses and 28 delegated powers needs to be looked at very carefully. Some powers have no procedure at all; they are not even classed as negative resolution.

Of all Bills, a Bill that relates to new food technology should, on the evidence of the past, be one that gives Ministers no new powers in respect of food safety. We settled all this many years ago. If Ministers do not think it matters, or that because Ministers are elected they are more important—we were told that the other day—they have not looked at the history of why the FSA is there in the first place. It is there to remove Ministers from pontificating on food safety because we wrecked industry after industry in the 1990s due to people’s lack of confidence, and the system has worked incredibly well, by and large, in the past 25 years. That is important. Ministers should have no role whatever in food safety. They are not qualified or trusted. The Bill looks a bit like it is side-lining the FSA, and for the avoidance of doubt I would like to hear from the Minister about that.

I will come back to this in Committee. I am pro-science, pro-technology, pro-consumer and a supporter of the Bill, but the Bill will have to be changed.