UK to relax law on gene-edited food in post-Brexit change from EU | Hacker News Reader

UK to relax law on gene-edited food in post-Brexit change from EU

newscientist.com

12 pointsbelter15 comments

> The vast majority of the UK public, 88 per cent, are opposed to the rule change allowing gene-edited food to be sold.

And yet a bill to that effect is introduced in Parliament at a time when arguably there are many, many more pressing issues...

That doesn't appear to be true, actually. I followed the link and it goes to a summary of a consultation:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

A consultation isn't an opinion poll. It's something anyone can write in to because they invite responses, so you get a biased sample. There's no evidence in this report on which you could make claims about the British public in general (most of whom would not have any opinion on the topic). Not entirely shocked that New Scientist would garble this / lie about it so badly.

Moreover the 88% figure is actually for a different question:

"We asked whether organisms developed using genetic technologies should be regulated as genetically modified organisms (GMOs), even if their genetic changes could have been produced through traditional breeding"

"Most individuals (88%) and businesses (64%) supported continuing to regulate such organisms as GMOs"

Not quite the same thing.

If you remove all the balances against Parliament they can do whatever they want. People shouldn't be surprised by this. Arrow's theorem severely limits what democratic bodies like this can really represent from the people and giving them too much power results in similar problems that giving any other governing institution too much power would.

there aren't any balances against Parliament, it is completely supreme

(the UK is not the US)

You at least nominally have the aristocracy in the form of the house of lords and the monarchy but they've been made useless over the last century and this is the result. Our senate is supposed to be the replacement for the house of Lords.

the house of the lords is part of parliament

(regardless, the commons is superior, as set by the precedent of the passing of the parliament act)

yes, because the tens of thousands of people that make up government across tens of different departments are only capable of doing one thing at once

There is limited time to debate bills in Parliament and MPs have limited time to ponder them.

My cynical speculation is that relevant interest groups think that this is a good time to push through legislation that will allow something that the public is overwhelmingly opposed to because they can hide behind the cost of living crisis/ War in Ukraine and claim that this would help the country's food independence and food prices.

I think you're confusing the government (politicians and political appointees) with the state (the civil service and employees of various organizations)...

no, government is not a synonym for "cabinet"

the term "government" includes government departments (Whitehall), which are mostly staffed by civil servants

meanwhile the state ("The Crown") is something completely different again

What the hell does the public know about the issue? What a braindead way to run a country that would be.

At least the public, in general, don't accept large donations from related companies.

> Other mooted uses for the technology include [..] creating crops resistant to diseases so farmers can use fewer pesticides, which have been linked to insect declines.

Odd the article does not mention that so far, the technology has been used in the exact opposite way - creating crops resistant to pesticides, so more could be sprayed [1]. All the wonderful genetic modifications trotted out in articles like these ignore that the companies making those modifications are profit-maximizing sociopaths (that will do their best to make your food chain dependent on them).

Rather than turning tomatoes into a vitamin-enriched healthy food, they will turn it into the vegetable equivalent of a snickers bar. The technology may hold promise, but the business incentives make me shudder.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_Ready

Promise and many risks...

"Broadening the GMO risk assessment in the EU for genome editing technologies in agriculture": https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12302-0...

[PDF]: https://enveurope.springeropen.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s12302-...

"...Genome editing techniques, especially the CRISPR/Cas technology, increase the possibilities and the speed of altering genetic material in organisms. So-called genome editing is increasingly being used to achieve agriculturally relevant novel traits and/or genetic combinations in both plants and animals, although predominantly as proof of concept studies, with commercial growing or rearing so far limited to the U.S. and Canada...

...However, there are numerous reports of unintended effects such as off-target effects, unintended on-target effects and other unintended consequences arising from genome editing, summarised under the term genomic irregularities...

...Despite this, the searching for genomic irregularities is far from routine in these studies and protocols vary widely, particularly for off-target effects, leading to differences in the efficacy of detection of off-target effects..."

Honestly tomatoes gene edited with natural pesticides like caffeine (from coffee) or Caspian (from jalapeno) sounds like an amazing niche in the market. (Spicy tomato sounds good).

Especially considering that the genes for both of those natural pesticides are probably already mapped.

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