Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
UK ministers are pressing ahead with legislation to adopt gene editing technology despite warnings from Brussels that it would conflict with a potential post-Brexit veterinary agreement with the EU.
Environment secretary Steve Reed said in a speech on Thursday that the UK government would introduce the secondary legislation required to give force to the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 by the end of March.
Reed’s announcement came despite EU diplomats telling the Financial Times on Wednesday that Britain’s plans on gene editing — which involves making precise changes to a plant’s existing DNA — would not be compatible with any bilateral veterinary deal.
Labour pledged to seek that accord, which is aimed at removing cumbersome border checks on food and plant products, during last year’s general election as part of a broader “reset” of relations with the bloc.
After his speech to the Oxford Farming Conference, Reed told the FT the government was pressing ahead with plans for gene editing — which is used to develop crops that are more resistant to pests, disease and the effects of climate change — because they were “the right thing to do”.
“By the time there’s an agreement, perhaps the EU will be seeing things differently,” he said. “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.”
In 2023, the EU brought forward its own plans to deregulate gene editing in crops in order to help farmers maintain yields in the face of climate change. But the proposals stalled last year as member states failed to agree on rules.
Hailed by the previous Conservative government as a major benefit of Brexit that would attract investment into an emerging sector estimated to be worth £1bn a year, the precision breeding act was designed to accelerate the use of gene editing in agriculture.
Brussels has previously indicated it is open to a veterinary agreement, but only if the UK agrees to “dynamic alignment” with EU food and plant safety rules that require the UK to transcribe EU law automatically into its own statute book.
They include an extensive and costly approval process for gene-edited crops.
Britain’s farming and plant breeding sectors have voiced concerns about delays to the secondary legislation, fearing that it had been placed on hold until Labour had reached a deal with the EU.
Industry reaction to Reed’s speech was divided. One senior farming figure said he doubted there was any chance that the precision breeding act could align with the EU’s own regulation on gene editing.
But Ed Barker, head of policy at the Agricultural Industries Confederation, a trade body, said the two “could, and should be able to, coexist . . . and one need not be contingent on the other”, adding that delays were damaging investor confidence.
This week, the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on science and technology in agriculture urged food minister Daniel Zeichner to commit to a “firm timetable” for the secondary legislation, describing the act as “progressive, coherent and evidence-based”.
Former Conservative science minister George Freeman, who chairs the APPG, said that the decision to push forward with the legislation and establish a UK rule book for gene-edited products would help to attract investors to the UK.
“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,” he added.
Johnathan Napier, science director at Rothamsted Research, an agricultural research institute, welcomed Reed’s announcement, saying the legislation would “help creators and developers establish the UK’s bioeconomy based around gene editing”.
