Scientists comment on reports of an EU 'reset' which could mean the Precision Breeding Act is dropped from UK legislation.
Prof. Jonathan Napier, project leader at Rothamsted Research, said: "In 2023, the UK diverged from the EU's outdated position on gene editing, creating an opportunity for our plant breeders and innovators to adopt this new technology. With the additional secondary legislation signed into law yesterday, the UK industry is now well-positioned to exploit the opportunities that gene editing represents. It is very telling that the EU is also trying to adjust its regulatory stance on GE crops, since they recognize that they are out of step with the rest of the world. But there is a golden opportunity for the UK's plant biotechnologists and plant breeders to bring new GE innovations to market before the EU catches up with us, and we would be mad not to grasp this chance with both hands."
Prof. Toby Bruce, Professor of Insect Ecology, Keele University, said: "Innovation in agriculture is needed to tackle food and environmental challenges. Restricting options for crop development means that opportunities are lost. New efficient crops could improve food security while allowing adaptation to climate change. They could help reduce the environmental footprint of farming and free up land for biodiversity conservation.
"The UK Precision Breeding Act is limited to gene editing. It does not cover the insertion of foreign genes beyond those that could have been achieved through traditional breeding methods. It addresses a strange anomaly of current EU legislation: targeted mutagenesis using gene editing techniques is banned at the moment, but random mutagenesis induced by radiation or chemical treatment is allowed."
Prof. Nigel Halford, Rothamsted Research and technical lead for PROBITY, said: "While there was some concern that the secondary legislation on the Genetic Technologies (Precision Breeding) Act might get caught up in the UK/EU negotiations, the secondary legislation is now law, so any risk has passed. It always seemed unlikely that the UK government would allow the EU to dictate to us on food standards anyway, since that would put the UK in the position of having to comply with regulations it had no control over."
Prof. Nick Talbot FRS, Executive Director of The Sainsbury Laboratory, said: "The Precision Breeding Act (PBA) will enable the UK to develop durably disease-resistant crops in a sustainable manner, preventing the use of chemicals that are fossil fuel-derived and have environmental impacts. Our negotiations should be about encouraging the EU to approve innovation in this area, rather than discouraging scientific solutions to the climate crisis.
"The scientific community within the EU understands this very well and has welcomed the developments afforded by the PBA. So, while regulatory alignment with the EU is very welcome, especially when it facilitates scientific collaboration, enabling safe and effective genetic technologies must be safeguarded, given their potentially profound benefits to European agriculture."
Dr. Penny Hundleby, Senior Scientist at the John Innes Centre, said: "As a scientist with over thirty years in genetic technologies, I've seen how innovation can transform agriculture. The UK now has a rare opportunity to lead globally in precision breeding — with the legislation passed and the science ready.
"To delay this progress in order to align with slower EU processes would undermine our ability to deliver resilient, sustainable crops at a time when food security and climate resilience are more urgent than ever. We risk forfeiting a clear post-Brexit advantage grounded in science, safety, and evidence."
Prof. Huw Jones, Chair in Translational Genomics for Plant Breeding, Aberystwyth University, said: "Closer ties with the EU are a good thing, but let's not lose the logical regulatory progress we have made this side of the Channel. Simple gene editing is a speedier and more reliable breeding method to develop the crops we need in a changing world. It's illogical to regulate these crops as GMOs, and it is the EU that has been slow to follow the broad consensus on this. If there are no foreign genes, and the changes could have been generated by conventional breeding, they need regulation – but not as GMOs."
Prof. Neil Hall, Director of the Earlham Institute, said: "Given the pressures on global food security, driven by climate change, the growing population, and new diseases, it's important that we harness all of the technical innovations at our disposal to ensure the sustainability of our agricultural systems.
"Over the past three years, including these last few months, Parliament has demonstrated important and legitimate leadership by passing the primary and secondary legislation to enable precision breeding in plants. It's time to enable scientific research to help farmers adapt to our changing world."
Prof. Jonathan Jones FRS, Group Leader at The Sainsbury Laboratory, said: "The Precision Breeding Act (PBA) provides an opportunity to protect our crops from pests and disease with biology rather than chemistry, and also enables new routes to more nutritious food, and I applaud this government and its predecessor for taking the legislation through to final approval and implementation. It is, to my mind, the sole Brexit dividend.
"However, it takes a long time between producing an improved plant in a lab and creating and obtaining approval for a variety that farmers can plant. I think it's highly likely that by the time any precision-bred varieties in the UK are ready to plant (likely at least 5 years from now), the EU will have approved its own version of the PBA.
"So, the government should stick to its guns on the PBA but quietly point out to the EU that, although there are no scientifically credible safety concerns with using these methods, the timelines in this industry are such that it will be a long time before any products are authorized in the UK and thus before any potential problems might arise."
Prof. Sarah Gurr, Chair in Food Security at Exeter University, said: "It is sad to realize that while we embraced the need for GM vaccines during the recent COVID epidemic, we seem reticent to embrace gene-edited crops. The need for climate-proofed and disease-resilient gene-edited crops is paramount in our quest for sustainable agriculture."
Source: Science Media Centre
