Written by Tom Allen-Stevens
A public consultation will start this autumn on post-Brexit regulation of precision-breeding techniques such as gene-editing. Tom Allen-Stevens reports. In what could result in its biggest stand against EU policy to date, the Government has announced it will shortly launch a public consultation on whether to diverge on restrictive GM crop regulation. Defra minister Lord Gardiner of Kimble told the House of Lords on Tuesday (28 July) that the Government is prepared to make the legislative changes necessary to ensure “a more scientific approach” is taken to plant-breeding techniques such as gene-editing. Lord Gardiner was responding to an amendment led by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Science and Technology in Agriculture during the Committee Stage debate on the Agriculture Bill. For more on gene-editing and crop improvement, see CPM‘s Genetics Special. Amendment 275 on agricultural research was tabled by former CLA president and Countryside Agency chair Lord Cameron of Dillington. It would allow the Defra secretary of state to change the way the Environmental Protection Act treats breeding techniques “where nucleic acid changes could have occurred naturally or through traditional breeding methods.” The Minister reiterated the Government’s longstanding objection to the “unscientific” European Court ruling of July 2018 classifying…
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