My Lords, Amendment 61 is in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Whitchurch and Lady Parminter. I thank them for their support. Both the
amendments in this group take on the issue of labelling. Traceability and labelling very much fit together. I will quote one sentence from the Soil Association’s briefing on the Bill, which makes a really important point:
“The objectives of the Bill could be achieved with the inclusion of labelling and traceability.”
It is crucial to say that these are amendments that, much as I might not like it, accept many other parts of the Bill but say that the public and industries have to be able to see what is going on.
I already referred to the FSA’s study of July 2021. To quote another of its findings:
“Most consumers felt labelling should always inform the consumer of the presence GE ingredients”.
I also note that the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, BBSRC and Sciencewise’s Public Dialogue on Genome Editing in Farmed Animals found that consumers
“wanted products from genome edited animals to be labelled as such.”
We have before us two amendments that are similar but slightly different; the second one, Amendment 62, being in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Bakewell. Either amendment would very much do the job. My Amendment 61 aims to be really clear and simple. It would give consumers information at the point of purchase, and although I fully understand the desire of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, to add further information about nutritional content, allergens and environmental impact, I suspect that we should be seeing that kind of labelling on all food, rather than specifically precision-bred food.
We can imagine what a so-called precision-breeding label might look like: a sticker that says “PB” in large writing with a little explanation underneath. Keeping that separate from the nutrition and environmental impact labelling in the interests of simplicity is an argument. Plus, saying that this should be added specifically to precision-bred food items but not to others does not quite add up, as far as I can see. However, I am not hugely wedded to that position, and I will interested to hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has to say in this regard.
If we were to do a survey on the public’s concerns about this Bill, labelling is probably the issue about which we would find the most concern, as is backed up by the research I have already quoted. It is very clear and understandable, and people just want to know what they are eating. That has always been true and is increasingly true, given, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said, some of the many scandals, problems and issues we have had with our food supply over the years. I beg to move.