Call for UK to end EU rule over GM research ban
An influential group of cross-party MPS and Lords has called on the UK government to ditch EU rules which currently deny British researchers access to precision breeding tools which they claim are vital for agricultural improvement both at home and overseas.
The all-party parliamentary group on science and technology in agriculture has called for a simple amendment to made to the UK Agriculture Bill which would allow UK regulations to be aligned with those adopted in other parts of the world, such as the US, Argentina, Brazil, Australia and Japan.
This, they claim, would grant UK researchers and breeders access to technologies which would deliver increased agriculturalproductivity, improve resource-use efficiency, provide more durable pest and disease resistance, improve nutritional values and give crops greater resilience to climate change.
Most scientists hold that gene editing techniques such as CRISPR-CAS9 can deliver radical improvements in the speed and precision of crop and livestock breeding by manipulating genetic material already carried by crops and livestock – and, as no foreign genetic material is introduced, they argue that this simply allows ends possible by the use of normal breeding techniques to be achieved much faster.
However in 2018 the EU’S Court of Justice ruled that the use of these tools should fall under the strict regulatory regime applied to genetically modified organisms (GMOS) – putting the EU at odds with how these techniques were regulated elsewhere in the world.
The ruling was widely criticised by scientists, farmers, plant breeders and politicians as an unwarranted block to innovation required in response to climate change, food security and sustainable development issues.
The parliamentary group has written to the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, George Eustice, urging the government to introduce an enabling amendment during the Lords stages of the Bill.
This would provide new powers for ministers to make changes to the UK
Environmental Protection Act – giving access to the gene editing techniques which they say would put Britain’s scientists, farmers, plant and animal breeders on a level playing field with their counterparts around the world.
“This proposal offers a simple regulatory solution for this once the UK leaves the EU, which would be to exchange the current EU definition of GMO in the UK Environmental Protection Act for a definition compatible with the internationally recognised Cartagena Protocol – to which the UK is a signatory,” said Julian Sturdy MP who chairs the parliamentary group.
He said that UK ministers had favoured such an approach in the past – and he added that the initiative had attracted widespread backing including the heads of many UK agricultural research institutes and university departments.
NIAB director Dr Tina Barsby said: “Now is the time to take positive action, not only to support a productive, competitive and resilient food and farming sector with access to the same tools as producers elsewhere, but also to improve British scientists’ ability to support major global challenges such as food and nutrition security, climate change and sustainable development.”