Since leaving the EU, the UK has sped up the approval process for novel foods such as lab-grown meat, as well as developing drought- and disease-resistant crops with the aim to lower food costs.

According to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the alignment of UK-EU rules on gene-edited foods will affect the genetic technologies sector by reverting authorisations for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to single market processes, meaning that the EU will hold responsibility for their regulation.

This means that producers will be required to ensure their GMO is also authorised in the EU by checking the EU’s community register of genetically modified food and feed to determine whether it needs to reformulate any product.

Looking at precision breeding, Defra said changes would be subject to ongoing negotiations between the UK and the EU as part of the SPS agreement. Defra said that the EU has “accepted there will need to be a number of areas where we need to retain our own rules”.

Defra also pointed out that alignment with EU rules would mean there will be alignment with the EU’s approach to checks on rest of world SPS trade, while requirements for trade with countries outside the EU will also continue to apply, in line with international rules. However, it said the agreement was not a customs agreement, so customs controls will remain.

EU could “come at UK” over gene-editing

Speaking to journalists, former Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan-Smith stated: “We are working with others around the world making advances in gene-editing. The EU is a backwater.”

He went on to say that the EU would “come at the UK” over gene-editing, which he said the EU “hates”.

The EU previously relaxed its rules on gene-edited crops, introducing a two-tier system freeing up new genomic techniques (NGT-1) crops, which means that they face fewer regulations and are no longer treated as GMOs.

Category 1 NGT plants are equivalent to conventional plants and plants obtained through conventional breeding, the legislation ruled, and are subject to a verification procedure while being treated like conventional plants (not subject to the requirements of GMO legislation). If a crop is ruled an NGT-1, it will be regulated like a conventional plant.

According to The Telegraph, UK gene-edited crops will be given a temporary exemption from EU laws under the UK-EU deal, and there will be a transition period to allow lab-grown meat and gene-edited crops to remain on the UK market. It also said the exemption would last a “number of years”, with the deal not expected to enter into force before 2028.

Speaking to journalists, Professor Johnathan Napier, a discovery leader at Rothamsted Research, said that gene-editing was needed, but that EU rules would be restrictive: “Technologies currently ready to be deployed would become out of scope in 2028, in both the EU and the UK.

“We don’t know any details about how the new EU regulations might be implemented and we have no mechanism to influence EU deliberations. This seems like a very backward step and one that is depressing for all of us who are trying to use the 2023 Act to develop crops that are resilient to drought and tolerant to more challenging climates.”

The deal comes as Tropic Biosciences received Defra approval for marketing of its precision-bred slow-browning banana.