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Now Britain can show international leadership on precision breeding in agriculture

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Professor Tina Barsby OBE & Professor Helen Sang OBE FRSE FRSB

 

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January 2025

Science for Sustainable Agriculture

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Amid media reports that prospective EU-UK realignment talks risked delaying or even derailing plans to introduce new gene editing rules in England, earlier this month the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Science and Technology in Agriculture called on Defra Ministers to set out a clear timetable to implement the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023. The Government responded quickly and positively, with Environment Secretary Steve Reed MP telling the Oxford Farming Conference that the necessary secondary legislation for plants would be presented to Parliament by the end of March 2025. Co-sponsors of the All-Party Group initiative, plant scientist Professor Tina Barsby and livestock geneticist Professor Sang, explain why they led calls for Ministers to follow through on their commitment to free up the use of precision breeding technologies to strengthen food security and improve agricultural sustainability. They also highlight the urgent need for parallel implementing rules to be introduced for farmed animals.    

 

In July last year, with the support of more than 50 leading organisations and individuals across the scientific, food processing, farming, breeding, veterinary and input supply sectors, we wrote to Defra Minister of State Daniel Zeichner MP, seeking confirmation that the newly-elected Labour administration would act quickly and decisively in bringing forward the secondary legislation needed to implement the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023.

 

At the time, Mr Zeichner responded positively by confirming that innovation is key to supporting the Government’s efforts to strengthen food security, enhance resilience and improve agricultural sustainability. He subsequently announced that the Government would bring forward the necessary implementing regulations “as soon as Parliamentary time allows.”

 

In his statement to the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit in London last September, the Minister also emphasised that legislation to unlock precision breeding was needed “to boost Britain’s food security, support nature’s recovery and protect farmers from climate shocks.”

  

We completely agree.

 

But five months on from our original letter, the Government had still not provided confirmation of a firm timetable for introducing this legislation. It is now almost two years since the Precision Breeding Act received Royal Assent following approval by both Houses of Parliament. Bringing forward the implementing rules, which have already been notified to the WTO, should be a formality.

 

That’s why we wrote again to Minister Zeichner, this time with the support of more than 65 cross-party politicians, leading scientists and agri-tech companies, calling on the Government to set out a clear timetable to introduce the secondary legislation. The strength of support we received from the scientific community in particular was fantastic, with no fewer than 12 heads of UK research institutes and university departments, and nine Fellows of the Royal Society.

   

In the letter, we noted that other Governments around the world have pointed to England, alongside other nations such as Canada, Australia and Japan, as examples of countries pressing ahead with more enabling regulation of precision breeding technologies such as genome editing.

 

On 17 December 2024, for example, just 14 months after taking office, New Zealand’s National-led coalition Government introduced the Gene Technology Bill to unlock the potential of new genetic technologies.

 

Science Minister Judith Collins said: “Our current regulations for genetically modified organisms are some of the most backward looking in the world. New Zealand has lagged behind other countries, such as Australia, Canada, and England, which have safely embraced these technologies for the benefit of their people and their economies.”         

The reality, however, is that unlike the other countries mentioned, the Precision Breeding Act in England remains an empty shell unless and until the necessary implementing rules are in place. Contrary to Minister Collins’ statement, we are not yet embracing these technologies for the benefit of our people and our economies.

 

With continued delay, we expressed concern that the Government risked sowing the seeds of doubt about its commitment to innovation among prospective investors and innovators, a number of whom are ready and waiting to bring forward exciting new PBO applications offering sustainability and nutritional benefits in key crops such as strawberries, tomatoes, oilseeds and potatoes.      

 

A further reason for seeking early and urgent confirmation of a timetable for implementing the Precision Breeding Act lay in recent reports that the UK Government may be preparing to open fresh trade negotiations with the European Union, including a new Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) agreement covering food and agriculture.

 

Worryingly, media reports had indicated that this could mean revoking the Precision Breeding Act altogether.

 

These reports were based on leaked documents from the EU indicating that the bloc’s terms for such a deal would require the UK to abide by rulings from the European Court of Justice on matters of EU law, with full alignment to the Union acquis and no scope for a deal “based on the equivalence of legislation”.

 

Two senior EU diplomats also told the Financial Times that Brussels had warned the UK government that a new SPS agreement would not be compatible with the UK’s current plans on gene editing technology.

 

That’s why it is such good news that Environment Secretary Steve Reed responded so quickly and decisively to calls for clarity, with an announcement at the Oxford Farming Conference that the secondary legislation needed to implement the Precision Breeding Act for plants will be introduced to Parliament before the end of March this year. This should mean that the regulatory framework will be operational and ready to accept its first applications in the autumn.     

 

Mr Reed told the Financial Times: “I don’t think we should stall going forward on things like this where we see huge advantages to the sector and domestic food production,” adding that it was “quite right that the UK should go ahead with the things we believe in.”

 

In his comments following the announcement, Mr Reed clearly acknowledged the EU challenges, but suggested that by the time an SPS agreement is reached, “perhaps the EU will be seeing things differently”, in a reference to current efforts by the Polish EU presidency to restart negotiations on the stalled proposals for EU regulation of New Genomic Techniques (NGTs).  

 

This is a bold move by Mr Reed and the Government. The Precision Breeding Act is progressive, coherent and evidence-based. Ministers should be applauded for taking decisive action now to demonstrate the Government’s strong commitment to innovation, and to taking the lead on the international stage – in Minister Zeichner’s words, putting our agriculture sector “at the forefront of innovation across the world”.  Failure to implement the Precision Breeding Act at the earliest possible opportunity would represent a serious backwards step for food security, climate action and more sustainable agriculture.

 

In relation to the use of precision breeding in farmed animals, which is covered under the Precision Breeding Act, the EU is even further behind. Waiting for the EU to develop its own regulatory approach would be a major setback for prospects to use genome editing to tackle virulent livestock diseases such as bird flu in poultry, porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) and African Swine Fever in pigs, bovine TB and viral diarrhoea in cattle, and sea lice infestation in farmed salmon.

 

With new bird flu cases being reported in the UK, the first case of foot and mouth disease for nearly 40 years just reported in Germany, and the US having recorded its first human death from bird flu, the importance of enabling all possible scientific solutions, and of the Government moving forward at the earliest possible opportunity with the parallel implementing rules for precision breeding in farmed animals, cannot be over-stated.  

 

British science is at the forefront of this research.       

 

Getting our rules in place now will enable investment to flow and innovation to take place. It will allow the first precision bred products to be commercialised, and for the market to demonstrate that it can deal with diverging regulations on an international basis, as is already the case for a range of agricultural technologies and inputs.

 

Most importantly, it will unlock the promise of these technologies in accelerating access to the agricultural innovation needed to make our farming systems more resilient, to produce more from less, to leave more room for nature, and to reduce the climate and environmental footprint of our food.  

 

Britain now has a unique opportunity to demonstrate regulatory leadership on an international stage, and to put our agriculture sector at the cutting edge of global innovation.

 

Professor Tina Barsby OBE is a plant geneticist and a former CEO of NIAB, where she led the implementation of innovative approaches to plant breeding, including the first public-good wheat breeding programme in the UK since the privatisation of the Plant Breeding Institute in 1987. She was awarded an Honorary Professorship in Agricultural Botany by the University of Cambridge in 2021. 

 

Retired livestock geneticist Professor Helen Sang OBE FRSE FRSB previously led a research programme at The Roslin Institute (University of Edinburgh) on the development and application of genetic technologies in the chicken. This research included applications in basic biological research, in biotechnology and in the potential of developing genetically disease resistant chickens, with funding from Government (mainly UKRI-BBSRC) and industry. She is a member of the Science for Sustainable Agriculture advisory group. 

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