The government has announced a new post-Brexit law designed to ‘cut the red tape’ around the development of crop technology.

The Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill, which will be introduced in Parliament today, will ditch what the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs describes as “unnecessary barriers” to research into new gene editing technology.

Environment secretary George Eustice said that now that the UK has left the European Union, the UK is “free to follow the science”.

The government says that the research into agri-food gene technology has been held back by EU legislation, claiming that the bloc’s laws focus on legal interpretation rather than science.

“These precision technologies allow us to speed up the breeding of plants that have natural resistance to diseases and better use of soil nutrients so we can have higher yields with fewer pesticides and fertilisers,” said George Eustice, secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs. “The UK has some incredible academic centres of excellence, and they are poised to lead the way.”

The government claims that these technologies, including gene editing, will give UK scientists the ability to help farmers create plant varieties and animals with “beneficial traits” that could “also occur through traditional breeding and natural processes, but in a more efficient and precise way”.

It said that precision breeding techniques can produce crops with fewer inputs, including pesticides and fertilisers.

“Substantial environmental, health and food security benefits can come from use of genetic technologies to precisely mimic breeding and improve our crops,” said Gideon Henderson, Defra chief scientific adviser.

These benefits also include creating safer food by removing allergens and preventing the formation of harmful compounds, according to the Environment department.

Share Story: