Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The UK’s plans to adopt the latest gene editing technology face delays over fears they will clash with EU law if Downing Street strikes an agreement with Brussels to remove border checks on food and plant products.
Two senior EU diplomats told the Financial Times that Brussels has informally warned the UK government that an agreement on cutting such checks would not be compatible with current British plans on gene editing technology.
The previous Conservative government passed legislation in 2023 to simplify rules for gene editing, hailing it as a major benefit of Brexit that would attract investment into an emerging sector estimated to be worth £1bn a year.
But the current Labour administration, which has set out the ambition of reducing impediments to trade with the EU, has yet to introduce the measures that would give force to the 2023 law.
Gene editing involves making precise changes to a plant’s existing DNA and is used to develop crops that are more resistant to pests, disease and the effects of climate change.
“We don’t want things to stop progressing because of a potential negotiation that we don’t even know is taking place,” said Anthony Hopkins, head of policy at the British Society of Plant Breeders. “Delay and uncertainty is terrible for investment.”
The Labour government said in September that it would introduce the secondary legislation needed to enable companies to bring gene edited products to market, claiming it would put the agriculture sector “at the forefront of innovation across the world”.
But four months later the measures needed to give practical effect to the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023, have not been introduced.
The delay has raised fears among scientific and business leaders that the plans have been put on ice ahead of the UK attempt to negotiate a broader deal with the EU to remove border checks on food and plant products, known as the veterinary agreement.
Brussels has previously indicated it is open to a veterinary agreement, but only if the UK agreed to so-called “dynamic alignment” with EU food and plant safety rules that require the UK to transcribe EU law automatically into its own statute book.
EU rules require a gene edited plant to go through a laborious and expensive approval process.
EU proposals to create a streamlined approach for gene editing have been blocked for a year by several member states who say the consequences for conventional crops are unknown.
In a sign of the growing concern in the UK farming industry, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Science and Technology in Agriculture this week sent a letter, signed by more than 50 leading scientists, politicians and investors, urging UK food minister Daniel Zeichner to commit to a “firm timetable” to introduce the secondary legislation.
“The Precision Breeding Act is progressive, coherent and evidence-based. There can be no certainty at all that the EU will end up with similar arrangements,” they warned in the letter, adding that a veterinary deal with Brussels could take “many years”.
Defra declined to comment when asked whether it was delaying the legislation as a result of the warnings from Brussels. It also declined to repeat on the record its previous commitments to introduce the legislation or set a timetable for doing so.
George Freeman, the former Conservative science minister, and lead signatory to the letter, said ministers needed to set out a timetable for implementation. “Prospective investors and innovators need clarity and certainty, not delays and speculation,” he added.
Professor Johnathan Napier, science director at Rothamsted Research, the UK’s leading agricultural research institute, said it would be a mistake for the UK to tie its regulatory system to that of the EU.
“There is a real danger we will end up being ‘rule takers’ rather than ‘rulemakers’, since we have no input or say in whatever position the EU is minded to take about gene editing,” he said.
But former UK trade department official Allie Renison, now at consultancy SEC Newgate, said the government’s apparent caution over introducing gene editing legislation was unwarranted and a compromise could be brokered in talks expected to begin this year.
“The EU is already pressing ahead with its own similar version of gene editing, and any differences can be tied off during negotiations,” she added.
The European Commission declined to comment.