My Lords, I rise more to inquire than to support particular amendments. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Winston, for tabling his amendments. I imagine that they are probing amendments, and that is the spirit in which I wish to address them. I declare that I am an honorary associate of the British Veterinary Association, and I am grateful to it for the briefing that it has given today.
The first question I put to the Minister for my better understanding is what the difference is between cloning an animal and gene-editing an animal or animal product. I did not follow it that closely, but I was very proud that my alma mater, Edinburgh University, was the first university in the world, I understand, to clone an animal—Dolly the sheep. However, it was not entirely successful as I understand she had a very short life. Obviously, one has to ask whether the reason for her curtailed life was that she had been cloned and not produced in a normal way.
The BVA brief that I have received today states:
“Prioritisation of animal health and welfare is essential, as is the use of adequate product labelling to enable transparency and consumer choice”—
I know we will come to those amendments in a different group. In particular, the BVA states, and I support this:
“Breeding and genetic modification must be used in an ethically responsible way to improve animal health and welfare, increase efficiency, and support sustainable agriculture.”
It goes on:
“The Bill is misleading and proposing deregulation based on the incorrect premise that ‘traditional breeding’ results in characteristics which can be assumed ‘safe’, and therefore gene-edited organisms which produce the same outcome are also ‘safe’. This ignores the potential for mutations.”
The Bill has “precision breeding” in its title, but this group of amendments goes to the fact that it can never be precise, because we can never be sure of the consequences, so perhaps it should be called the “imprecise breeding” Bill.
The reason that I am tempted to support a number of amendments in this group, particularly Amendment, 1 is the very fact that it states that,
“‘directed bred organism’” means a directed bred plant or a directed bred animal.”
It is important to understand in what way that plant or animal has been directed and that there is scope for an imprecise outcome, an unexpected outcome. As the noble Lord, Lord Winston, for whom I am full of awe and praise, with his widespread knowledge and, even more, his experience, said, we could be creating something of which we cannot control the outcome. I am not saying that I stand in the way of that, but I would like better to understand what it is.
There was a news story last night about a little girl whose cancer had not been cured until they came up with a gene-editing formula. They edited genes and implanted them in her, and it looks as though she may now have a cure. However, we are at the very early stage of these procedures, as I understand it, and I believe that there is some sympathy still for the view that the European Union took, which is widely criticised in this House and the other place. Probably the reason
that the European Union and its institutions overreacted was the widespread fear among consumers. I think that fear is still there. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, has tabled a number of amendments which we will deal with in another group and with which I have a degree of sympathy. As I said at Second Reading, if this procedure, this form of breeding is so good, why can we not be told about it on labelling? Why should consumers have the barrier of having to go to a register? With those few remarks, I support the thinking behind some of the amendments in this group.