UK Parliament / Open data

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

The comment I would make is that I am asking for long-term surveillance of the results of gene editing, in the same way that we

should have had long-term surveillance of the random mutations in the ordinary, traditional basic breeding that goes on at the moment.

To pick up on what the noble Lord seemed to be hinting at a few minutes ago in some of his remarks, I do not think anyone is suggesting that any gene editing goes on in any farming environment. No gene editing is going to go on except in a laboratory under really strict conditions, as I see it. If you talk to the gene editors and breeders who are already doing this sort of science, they will tell you that no animal is released from a laboratory or from laboratory conditions for at least two or three generations down the line before it goes on a farm. I noted what the noble Lord said about that, and I do not think there is a danger of someone coughing 50 yards away, as he mentioned, on a farm—but maybe that happens in a laboratory as well.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
826 cc674-5 
Session
2022-23
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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