The UK’s GMO ‘Free-for-all’ Begins

March 6, 2025 by Staff Reporter

New secondary legislation that expands the sweeping deregulatory powers of the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act, has been laid.

The secondary legislation, developed by Defra and the Food Standards Agency, raises serious concerns about consumer choice, food safety and government priorities when it comes to farming and food – as well as being a dramatic shift from Labour’s previous position on these things.

The Act dismantles key safeguards such as labelling and traceability for genetically engineered – so-called “precision bred” organisms (PBOs). According to Pat Thomas, director of Beyond GM:

“The Genetic Technology Act is a shoddy piece of legislation that is a fundamental breach of public trust in the UK farming and food system and a significant step backwards for consumer rights. By stripping away essential labelling and traceability, it leaves consumers uninformed, the large majority of non-GMO farming and food businesses in the UK exposed to unforeseen risks including financial and reputational loss and, potentially, a competitive disadvantage.”

You can read Beyond GM’s response to the new legislation in its recent submission to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee here.

A long process

If it feels like you’ve heard this before, it is, in part, because the legislative process is lengthy – and has been made longer still by a general election and a change of government – and in part because of a multi-faceted PR assault by the biotech industry complaining about delays.

The Act which passed in 2023 was a skeletal framework. Only a few parts of it were operational from day one, so it requires new regulations to be brought in to make different parts of it operational. These are being brought in in stages.

The recently published draft regulations focus on the commercialisation/marketing of “precision bred” foods and feed (including imports) and consolidate existing regulations for experimental field trials.

These new regulations are arguably the biggest sections of the Act and represent significant change in the way we regulate GMOs. It’s worth remembering that so-called “precision bred organisms” or PBOs are defined as GMOs in the Act – what the Act does is create regulatory exceptions for them, i.e. removing labelling and monitoring/traceability requirements. For this reason, they should more accurately be called precision-bred GMOs (PB-GMOs).

Impact on consumers and businesses

These new regulations will affect every level of the UK food system:

Developers of GMO food and feed will be allowed to self-certify the food and environmental safety of their PB-GMOs) rather than have to go through a formal application process. It has been estimated that 94% of these products will enter the market without any further oversight under the new self-certification system.

Consumers will lose their right to make an informed choice. Instead of clear labelling, they’ll need to cross-reference multiple government registers to identify the PB-GMOs allowed in the UK. However, none of these databases will tell consumers which products these organisms are in.

In organic agriculture, PB-GMOs will, legally, continue to be regulated as GMOs and subject to existing GMO regulations. However, organic and non-GMO Food businesses face unprecedented challenges in maintaining GMO-free supply chains. The government has confirmed it won’t fund the necessary testing technology to help them verify GMO-free status.

British farmers risk being undercut by PB-GMO food and feed imports produced to even lower standards than those required in the UK.

Labour’s inexplicable U-turn

The new Labour government had an opportunity to produce new secondary legislation that reflected the multiple concerns it expressed whilst in opposition. Instead it chose to dust off the draft regulations left behind by the Tories and use those instead.

The Labour government’s new embrace of deregulated GMOs represents more than a policy shift. It marks the abandonment of principles the party vigorously defended just months ago. Thomas describes Labour’s support for a legislative package written under the previous Conservative government as “bizarre and inexplicable” and says it raises serious questions about how and why a party that so recently condemned these measures now champions them.

“The speed and completeness of Labour’s reversal suggests either that its previous opposition was mere performance politics, or that the party has capitulated to the kind of corporate capture it once stood against“, she adds.

Biotech is the only beneficiary

The apparent hypocrisy extends beyond parliamentary debates. In public statements in the lead-up to the 2024 general election, Labour said its priority was to “put consumers first” and “maintain the highest food safety standards.” The party’s election manifesto pledged  “to champion British farming while protecting the environment”.

This reversal becomes even more striking given that four government agencies – the Regulatory Policy Committee, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, the Constitution Committee and the European Scrutiny Committee – declared the draft of the Act “not fit for purpose”, “unclear” and unconstitutional, having failed to provide “adequate justification” for the delegated powers that it confers.

Reading the new draft legislation, it becomes painfully obvious that the biotech industry is the only beneficiary of this new legislation, which not only removes regulatory controls but all liability from biotech developers. It shifts the responsibility for avoiding precision-bred GMOs to those farmers and food companies that choose not to use precision-bred GMOs, and to consumers that choose not to eat them. Instead it offers up a confusing set of registers housed on the government and FSA websites which will detail what organisms are classified as PB-GMOs but not what foods contain them.

Not the end

While these regulations are disappointing, the issue is far from settled. More new regulations for precision-bred GMO animals – and possibly other types of organisms – are due to be added to the Act over 2025-26. Beyond GM urges UK citizens to continue to demand that the government seize these opportunities to introduce robust safeguards and transparency into the next round of legislation.  We also urge supermarkets, which have thus far remained silent, to stand up for what their customers want.

These are hard times for all the UK’s environmental groups as environmental – and maybe particularly agricultural – issues drop perilously down the government’s “pecking order“. But we’ve got your backs.

  • You can read Beyond GM’s response to the new legislation in its recent submission to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee here.

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