Controversies and challenges facing gene editing in the UK
GM Freeze reports on a Westminster Food & Nutrition Forum conference
On 29th April 2025, as the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Regulations were making their way through parliament, a group of experts gathered virtually at a Westminster Food & Nutrition Forum conference to discuss the next steps for gene editing – new GMOs – in the UK.
The panellists included stakeholders from government, industry, research institutes, law firms, NGOs and a plant-breeding lobbying organisation. The range of interests represented and willingness to take questions from the floor made for a far-reaching discussion that highlighted a number of challenges around gene-editing and the regulatory framework that will govern it.
This article addresses a number of the issues raised, including labelling and public opinion, trade disruptions, risks, patents, nutritional impacts, contamination and challenges with the technology.
Chairperson Baroness Bennett tweets about the Westminster Food and Nutrition Forum event on gene editing, 29th April 2025.
Labelling and public opinion
Gene-edited food is likely to reach our tables by this autumn, according to Professor Gideon Henderson, Chief Scientific Advisor at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). There will be no mandatory labelling – a contentious issue that many of the panellists commented on.
Professor Cathie Martin from the John Innes agricultural research centre was the lone voice amongst the research, industry and government representatives to speak in favour of labelling. Polls have consistently shown that the public want labelling, as highlighted by Kierra Box from Friends of the Earth, Dr Fere Malekpour from the agri-tech company B-Hive Innovations and Daniel Cameron of the market research company Ipsos. Dr Kate Parkes of the RSPCA pointed out that we already have legislation governing labels that identify how a food item was produced, for example, different methods of egg production.
A couple of the panellists were sceptical about public engagement. Duncan Ribbons of the biotech company Tropic said it was hard to educate consumers from a scientific perspective, whereas issues framed in terms of benefits were more readily understood and accepted.
This approach appears to have underpinned some DEFRA research into public perceptions of gene-edited foods, including a 2022 poll it commissioned, in which – according to Dr Mark Pack of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (SLSC) – respondents were given positives about the technology and no possible concerns.
The SLSC was critical of DEFRA’s use of an unpublished poll to “justify potentially contentious policy decisions”, and it’s a poll that contradicts all other public polling on the issue. Nevertheless, Professor Henderson used the poll at the conference to claim that 57% of people thought gene-editing to make plants for food production was acceptable.
Even this flawed poll suggests that nearly half of the population is unsure about the technology or considers its use in food production unacceptable, yet the government refuses to label gene-edited foods.
Baron Pack analysed the poll further and found that only 52% of those surveyed had heard of genome/gene-editing and only 1.5% said they were very well informed about it. He concluded that “using that one question [which gave the 57% figure] as part of the evidence base for policy is not putting policy on secure foundations”.
Trade impacts
Another recurring issue was the likely impact on trade. England joins around 20 countries in introducing “enabling” regulations for gene-editing, according to Dr Teresa Babuscio from the agribusiness Corteva, which has reportedly applied for around 1,430 patents on new GMOs.[i]
She acknowledged there would be trade disruption if Scotland and Wales didn’t also “embrace the technology”. Dr. Malekpour also referred to the need for regulatory alignment to avoid “trade friction”.
Professor Henderson noted that, although Scotland and Wales didn’t allow gene-edited products to be grown in their jurisdictions, the UK Internal Markets Act (UKIMA) meant things sold in England could be transferred across the borders and sold there. He raised the potential for a late-stage exception to the UKIMA, but said this wasn’t expected.
Regarding trade with the EU, Professor Henderson said it would be “very easy to simply prevent those crops from moving into the EU”, and that he was “not anticipating any complexities in terms of EU borders over those which already exist”. This is interesting given that, in an Impact Assessment published by DEFRA in 2022, checks and certification requirements were predicted to be barriers to trade and would affect all products for which there were gene-edited varieties. These non-tariff barriers were predicted to increase the costs of production for UK food exporters by around £8.56bn a year.
Duncan Ribbons noted that the handful of gene-edited products that have been approved and commercialized are still treated as GMOs in most countries. Differing regulatory systems create barriers to trade, he stated, so “accelerating adoption of precision breeding regulation on a global basis is therefore the number one priority for developers”.
According to Professor Henderson, there are “lots of markets around the world” that allow gene-edited products. He claimed they would become “easier to access than they are at the moment”, though he didn’t explain the reasoning behind this prediction.
He went on to acknowledge that there would need to be ways to trace gene-edited products through supply chains if the UK was to sell mass produced crops such as wheat to countries that do not allow such materials. Professor Martin also highlighted this problem with commodity crops, stating that “wheat breeders are very anxious about mixing in GE [ii] with non-GE and having to separate it”.
Kierra Box highlighted the dangers of our “increasingly fragmented global trade system”, querying the impacts for farmers in England and the global South of buying patented seeds from other countries.
Trade disruptions could hit UK wheat exporters. But who would be liable for losses? Photo: David Bagnall/Alamy
Risk
Panellists also differed in their view of risk. According to Dr Malekpour, not all gene-edited crops carry same level of risk, and the level of scrutiny applied should be proportionate. But Professor Mario Caccamo, from the biotech company Niab, stated that the risks are no different to those associated with traditional breeding techniques.
Kierra Box, however, raised the potential of risk to people and nature as a result of gene-editing and called for a precautionary approach “in which there’s a full assessment of risk alongside monitoring and mitigation mechanisms which are baked in”.
She explained: “So if things go wrong, harm can be tackled in the moment and prevented in future.” She stated that she was “concerned that the systems we’re talking about today don’t adequately consider the potential for unintended consequences or unforeseen risk”. The specific risks she highlighted were off-target changes to the genome, knock-on ecosystem harm and public health impacts.
Nutritional considerations of bruising, browning and rotting
Potatoes and bananas were two of the crops being developed by panellists with the aim of stopping them from bruising or browning. There was some discussion about whether stopping discolouration would also stop the decomposition process that it would otherwise indicate. Duncan Ribbons of Tropic claimed there would be no change to the nutritional value of the fruit. Dr. Malekpour of B-Hive Innovations stated that, normally, if you saw a damaged fruit or crop you wouldn’t eat it, but nutritionally it should stay the same. It should perhaps be noted that she did not appear to have given the question prior consideration.
Is it really wise to disguise damaged and over-ripe fruit?
Pharmafruits
Further discussion of the nutritional potential of gene-edited products arose with Professor Martin’s introduction of a tomato genetically engineered to accumulate pro-vitamin D. The question was raised about whether supplements would be preferable to genetically altering fruit, and easier and cheaper to deliver in countries where vitamin D deficiency was a particular problem.[iii]
Professor Martin stated: “It’s always better to try and offer people the choice of having their vitamins through food”. She suggested that people could then take their vitamin D in a Big Mac or in ketchup.
Here the labelling question arose again. With no labelling requirement, it seemed the John Innes Centre was considering describing the product as a “sunshine tomato”, and vitamin D enriched, but not stating how this had been achieved.
Regulations for supplements, on the other hand, cover labelling, safety and the health claims made. One outstanding regulatory issue is whether pharmafruits – those with claimed enhanced nutritional qualities – should be regulated as supplements.
Tomatoes naturally contain the antioxidant lycopene, which is thought to support bone health. Photo: Verywell Health
Patents
Siân Edmonds from the law firm Osborne Clarke stated that the Genetic Technology Act and draft regulations are silent on intellectual property, but that under the European patent convention, “plants and their processes of production may be patented provided that they are not exclusively obtained by means of an essentially biological process”.
She also stated that the scope of genetic technology patents does not extend to plants produced via conventional breeding methods. However, she wasn’t familiar with research done by groups such as No Patents on Seeds, which found that “gene variants and traits found in existing plant populations are frequently being ‘re-invented’ with NGTs [New Genomic Techniques [iv]] to create the impression of a technical invention.” Such patents “very often extend to conventional breeding,” according to the research.
One panellist who has first-hand experience of the issue is Professor Martin, whose biotech company, Norfolk Healthy Produce (NHP), has pursued a traditional plant breeder over alleged patent infringement. Testing of the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company’s purple tomato did not conclusively find evidence of NHP’s genetically modified material, but nor could it be proved that it was free of it. The Baker Creek tomato has been withdrawn.
Could have happened naturally?
Whilst in theory patents should not be granted for plants unless they involve a technical invention, the very definition of precision breeding is that the change it brings about could have happened through traditional breeding processes. Professor Martin said she believed the tomato plants she is producing could have occurred through traditional breeding. Furthermore, the John Innes Centre is running a project to screen for natural variants, “having shown that we can produce them by editing”.
Contamination
Another problematic issue is that of contamination. According to Kierra Box, “it’s very unclear how organic operators will be able to maintain their legal duty to remain GMO free, how cross contamination might be prevented, traced and stopped, or who would be liable in the event of an organic farmer’s crop being contaminated”.
The British On-Farm Innovation Network (BOFIN) is scaling up the production of gene-edited wheat and barley seeds in multiple sites across the UK. BOFIN’s Tom Allen-Stevens was asked whether there will be any efforts to inform neighbouring farmers of the trials so they can take steps to ensure there is no contamination of their crops. He stated that the position of the farmers they are working with has changed: A 2019 survey found they considered it the neighbouring farmers’ responsibility to protect their crops, but in 2023 they favoured a voluntary arrangement to inform their neighbours.
According to Tom Allen-Stevens, it’s “easy-peasy to talk to your neighbour.” He suggested farmers might say: “Look, I’m going to be growing a PBO.[v] Obviously, I’ll keep it away from the boundary…” The Chair of the event, the Green Party Baroness Natalie Bennett, expressed some scepticism.
Challenges with the technology
Alongside the regulatory challenges presented by gene editing, Dr Vladimir Nekrasov of the Crop Transformation and Genome Editing Unit at Rothamsted Research said there are also challenges with the technology. “Our understanding of genetic networks controlling traits in crops is still very limited,” he said. The specific issues he raised were the absence of genome sequence information; the delivery of genome-editing tools into plants; the efficiency of genome-editing tools and challenges with editing multiple genes at the same time.
He also raised the question of what evidence will be needed to prove that a product classified as Precision Bred is transgene-free. Professor Martin made the case for whole genome sequencing, stating that it is “absolutely reliable” and questioning why “we avoid that as a requirement”.
The disclosure requirements of the Register
During the conference it became apparent that developers were uncertain about other aspects of the regulatory framework soon to be in operation. Professor Martin queried how much information about the edits made will be publicly available through the PBO register. Interestingly she didn’t direct this question to Professor Henderson. Instead she questioned Dr Anthony Hopkins of the British Society of Plant Breeders – a lobbying organisation whose members include the four biggest global pesticide corporations that also control 70% of the global seed market: Bayer, Syngenta, Corteva and BASF.
Dr Hopkins said he didn’t have the details entirely at hand but that he suspected it wouldn’t be a vast amount of detail.
A systemic approach?
Dr. Malekpour echoed a claim made by DEFRA third-in-command Emma Hardy MP when the Genetic Technology regulations were debated in a parliamentary committee. Both spoke of the potential for gene editing to transform the food system.
But Baroness Bennet argued that “doubling down on what we’re doing now is not the answer.” We should be going to an agro-ecological approach that works with nature, rather than trying to force it into submission, she said.
For Kierra Box, “racing to fight specific pests and so-called deficiency in the foods we eat gene by gene is the opposite of the ecosystems-based approach that we need to see”. She argued for solutions that work in tandem with nature, building resilience through diversity.
Whatever next?
DEFRA has recently run a public consultation on whether the seeds of gene-edited plants will need to be labelled. Interestingly, this was not raised at the Westminster Forum, despite the fact that this decision is likely to be a significant next regulatory step in terms of gene editing in the UK.
In the UK the legislative landscape is changing to facilitate the production and sale of gene-edited products. The conference highlighted the fact that, despite this, there remain a number of significant challenges, uncertainties and issues of contention.
Leonie Nimmo is the Executive Director of GM Freeze.
Notes
[i] Genetically Modified Organisms produced through gene editing and other new genetic technologies.
[ii] Gene edited.
[iii] Perhaps they could also be modified to withstand the effect of bruising, or at least disguise its impacts.
[iv] Plants produced using New Genomic Techniques. This classification is likely to have some convergence with Precision Bred Organisms (PBOs) in England.
[v] Precision Bred Organism.
