To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the Government's proposals to deregulate gene editing, announced on 29 September 2021, what criteria he plans to use to determine whether an organism produced by gene editing or another technology could have been produced by traditional breeding or not.
Answered on
1 December 2021
The Government plans to take a science-based proportionate approach to the regulation of genetic technologies including gene editing. We are seeking advice from our Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE) on the criteria used to determine whether an organism produced by gene editing or another technology could have been produced by traditional breeding. We are also looking at the criteria used by other countries, gathering information from stakeholder engagement and views provided in the responses to our consultation on the regulation of genetic technologies.