Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to help ensure that the Devolved administrations can prevent unlabelled precision-bred seeds and plant reproductive materials marketed in England from entering their supply chains.

Defra is working with the organic sector to prepare for the medium and longer term by discussing non-legislative options for supply chain coexistence. This includes facilitating discussions between experts to establish which measures, currently used by the industry, could be used by farmers to enable coexistence between precision bred and non-precision bred crop production. This is in line with approaches taken internationally.

To implement the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023, a new Precision Bred Plant Variety List for England is proposed. Any precision bred agricultural or vegetable plant varieties need to be accepted onto the new variety list before being marketed. Users, including those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, will be able to access information about precision bred plant varieties in the Plant Varieties and Seeds Gazette.

Defra are continuing to engage regularly with the Devolved Governments to discuss potential impacts.