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

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they obtained a legal opinion on the status of crops grown under the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 in relation to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety; whether the Cartagena Protocol requires these crops to be labelled as genetically modified organisms for the purpose of trade; and whether they will publish any legal opinion they have obtained.

Lawyers advised throughout the development of the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023. This included how the act related to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. As stated in the Legal background section of the explanatory notes to the Act, “The UK Government considers that the Cartagena Protocol does not apply to organisms produced using modern biotechnologies if those organisms could have occurred naturally or been produced by traditional methods.” If Precision Bred plants were traded, they would have to comply with the labelling requirements of the importing country.