My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response and all the noble Lords who have contributed to this absolutely crucial debate—in particular, the noble Lords opposite who put so much into it. Given the hour, I will park the debate about Jabal wheat for the moment; perhaps we can have that debate over the Long Table sometime and continue the discussion.
I want to say something very serious and, I must say, concerning. The Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, both said that it is impossible to identify whether something has been gene edited. I have no doubt that the Minister is operating on the advice that he has received, but I am afraid that that is simply untrue. It is a great pity that the noble Lord, Lord Winston, is not in his place; I will attempt to channel him because he would undoubtedly say this better than I am going to.
As an example, I refer to a 2020 article in Theoretical and Applied Genetics by Biswas, Rong et al. Its title is “Effective identification of CRISPR/Cas9-induced and naturally occurred mutations in rice using a multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification-based method”. Let me translate that into English. This article shows how you can identify both the intended and unintended impacts of the use of CRISPR-Cas9, as well as any other mutations that occur independently of the use of CRISPR—in rice, for example.
That is just one example from 2020. Let us look at another example: a commercial practice called the real-time PCR method. I think we have all become familiar with PCR tests during Covid. I have no reason to disbelieve it so I cite what the commercial company says: that this method detects
“what is probably the most challenging class of gene edits—a modification of just a single letter in the genetic blueprint”.
This is the simplest change possible and it is detectable through a PCR test—something with which we are all highly familiar.