Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what his Department's policy is on gene editing.

Defra’s view is that gene-edited organisms should not be regulated as genetically modified organisms if the end product could have been produced naturally, or by traditional breeding methods. Such gene-edited organisms would not contain DNA from other species. Defra is currently consulting on a proposal to amend the definition of a genetically modified organism as it applies in England.