At the height of the anti-GM movement in 1999, then-Greenpeace UK chief Peter Melchett was charged with theft and criminal damage after cutting a genetically modified cornfield.
In a decisive victory for the anti-GM movement, Lord Melchett and 27 fellow activists were acquitted by a jury in what many saw as a measure of the public’s deep negative sentiment towards GM technology.
More than 20 years later, as the government proposes relaxing regulations on gene-edited products, experts say the public view of technology has softened, if not completely, at least.
“I think most people now have what I call Catherine Tait’s vision:‘ Am I bovvered? ’” Said Professor Jonathan Jones of Sainsbury’s Laboratory, a Norfolk-based plant research institute.
Scientists like Jones welcome new legislation that could pave the way for a range of technologically enhanced products, from vitamin D-enriched tomatoes to anti-cancer wheat. But experts also question whether the technology will really boost food security and the environmental benefits promised by the government.
One point of discussion is the distinction between genetically engineered products, which will be allowed, and genetically modified organisms, which will still be subject to strict legislation.
Newer gene editing techniques, called “precision creation” in the bill, involve precise changes to the individual letters of the genetic code. These changes can be achieved much less efficiently through years of crossing.
But the legislation will not immediately open up to first-generation genetic modification (GM) techniques, which involve taking an entire gene from one plant and inserting it into another.
This concept was behind the unfounded term “Frankenfood”, but it has also yielded some of the most impressive results, such as a pest-resistant potato, known as pepper plus, developed by the Jones team.
The potato is identical to maris piper, apart from three genes that make it resistant to late blight, which costs UK farmers tens of millions of pounds a year and requires farmers to spray the fields more than a dozen times. every year.
“I’m a little uncomfortable with the way this has been presented to the public,” Jones said. “He seems to be saying, ‘Don’t worry about this nasty GM because we can do whatever we want with this beautiful method of editing genes.’
Jones said the bill could be a reasonable “tactical compromise” that could pave the way for further relaxation of GM’s rules. “At least I hope that’s what the government thinks,” he added.
The distinction has also upset some environmentalists. “Gene editing is just a subset of GM,” Kierra Box of Friends of the Earth said. The charity, he said, maintained a “fundamental opposition” to genetic modification because it was not convinced that the technology could offer environmentally friendly solutions. “If we are interfering with nature’s genetic codes, we don’t know how these things respond,” he added.
However, no one expected the activists to break wheat fields edited by genes. Greenpeace, once strongly opposed, does not offer an insight into the bill when contacted. “It’s not what we said, we haven’t done much work in the area recently,” a spokesman said in an email.
Another concern is that the legislation will only apply to England: the Scottish and Welsh governments, which have transferred control of these regulations, are opposed to changing the rules. Under current proposals, gene-edited products could only be developed by scientists and farmers in England, but sold across the UK, which could exacerbate political tensions and public opposition.
Complicated supply chains mean this is also a bit of a “nightmare” logistically, according to Jones. For example, a large proportion of seed potatoes in the UK, which supply potato farms, are grown in Scotland because their colder climate makes them less susceptible to a pathogen called the potato virus Y. Jones said the his team was looking at whether editing genes could also make potatoes resistant to this virus. “Maybe we should make an exit,” he said.
There is also a persistent question about where public opinion really lies.
Professor Cathie Martin of the John Innes Center in Norwich said the anti-GM movement was, at its core, driven by concerns about globalization and that this conversation had continued. “It was the way Monsanto tried to introduce GM crops into Europe without consulting and without a proper understanding of European farming systems,” he said. “Since then we’ve had a couple of major wars on 9/11, the threat of climate change has been focused. People see the risks in different ways.”
Dr Pete Mills, deputy director of the Nuffield Bioethics Council, which is leading a consultation on public attitudes towards genetically modified products, said recent research, though not much, suggests that ” people don’t really care about technology. “
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“What matters to them is animal welfare, what the purpose is, to whom the benefits accrue,” he said. Mills said the intention to extend the proposed legislation to cover animals released by genes at a later date raises particular ethical concerns, and may make the term “precision breeding” feel less reassuring. “The perception of conventional breeding, especially when it comes to animals, is that this has led to unsustainable results,” he said.
Scientists such as Jones and Martin have pioneered transgenic technology to create crops that they believe could have substantial environmental and nutritional benefits. But there are less healthy counterexamples, such as “double-muscle” pigs edited by genes, more meat, but with other health problems.
“The legislation really has no bearing on the purposes for which these technologies will be used,” Mills said. “I think that’s problematic.”