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

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the regulatory divergence between Great Britain and Northern Ireland that may occur as a result of the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill.

We have discussed our proposed policy changes with all the Devolved Administrations and will continue to keep them informed as the Bill is implemented through commencement regulations.

Under the current NI Protocol arrangements, any goods placed on the market in Northern Ireland, regardless of whether they originate from Great Britain or anywhere else in the world, are required to comply with relevant EU law which remains directly applicable within Northern Ireland under the terms of the Protocol. This means that precision bred organisms will not be able to be imported into Northern Ireland unless approved and labelled as a GMO.

In addition to gaining approval of precision bred status, precision bred crops in England will still need to follow the approval process for new traditionally bred crops. Therefore, we predict it will be several years before domestically produced precision bred crops will be on the market for farmers and consumers. Of the products we expect to come to market during that timeframe, we have not identified any commodity traded between Great Britain and Northern Ireland that would be singled out for significant impact by this restriction.

The EU has recently concluded a public consultation on its future regulation of plants, and their food and feed products, obtained using ‘New Genomic Techniques’. This indicates that the EU may take a similar approach to that of England in creating a new regulatory regime for precision bred plants, where the genetic changes could have arisen through traditional breeding. We will continue to monitor the position of the EU on precision bred products and on UK/EU trade implications for products developed using precision breeding.