Following minister's speech announcing implementation plans for deregulation of new GMOs, Prof Michael Antoniou and GMWatch explain what needs to be included in the secondary legislation

At the end of September the UK Minister of State for Food Security and Rural Affairs Daniel Zeichner announced that the new Labour government will proceed with issuing the secondary legislation that will implement the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act.

The Act, the brainchild of disgraced former prime minister Boris Johnson, was passed by the previous Conservative government in 2023. As it stands, it would remove a whole subclass of GMOs, dubbed "precision bred", from meaningful regulatory oversight in England, in effect aligning the country with weak US standards. New GMOs developed using techniques such as gene editing would no longer be subjected to risk assessment for health and the environment, traceability requirements, or labelling.

However, the upcoming secondary legislation is a chance to fill the legal gaps and maintain these important protections. Now the molecular geneticist and toxicologist Prof Michael Antoniou and GMWatch co-director Claire Robinson have written a letter to Minister Zeichner,* setting out the measures that must be included in the secondary legislation to ensure that new GMOs are regulated in a science-based and responsible manner.

The letter emphasises that it is not enough for developers to self-declare that their GMO is "precision bred" – in other words, that it could have been developed through traditional processes. They must prove that it is. This would entail using long-read whole genome sequencing and carrying out full molecular characterisation of the GMO to demonstrate that it does not contain unexpected toxins or allergens or have other compositional changes that could damage health or the environment.

The letter adds that developers should also supply seeds or other material from the GMO, along with a detection method, so that it can be identified and detected in case adverse effects occur from its release or consumption.

The letter also warns Minister Zeichner that bodies that advise the government on GMOs are compromised by the presence of people with conflicts of interest with the agricultural GMO industry.

There are indications that their biases have influenced Minister Zeichner. His speech announcing plans to finalise the secondary legislation was characterised by over-hyped yet evidence-free claims that new GM crops will deliver all kinds of imagined benefits, including pest-resistant crops and crops that are resilient to climate change. Thus far, there are no such crops close to commercialisation.

Minister Zeichner's speech followed just a few days after the release of an investigation showing that the US government used taxpayers' money to fund a covert "dirty tricks" campaign to promote GMOs and pesticides across the world, including in Europe.

Claire Robinson commented, "There is still time to remove this legislation from the grip of lobbyists and people with vested interests in GMO development. The legislation must be completed on the firm basis of scientific principles and evidence. Minister Zeichner has a chance to make the Act serve the interests of the public and the environment, rather than merely those of the agricultural GMO industry."


* Note that in this version published by GMWatch, minimal edits have been made to the letter to exclude personal information, such as contact details.