What stands in the way of gene-edited foods?

A final benefit gene-edited crops - covered by the precision breeding bill - could bring is combating disease and climate change, as Gideon Henderson from DEFRA explains…

Gideon - As an environmental scientist, some of the most exciting possibilities that come out of gene editing is our ability to make crops that will help us to look after the environment. So something like a third of world's crops are lost at the moment to pests or to diseases. And if we're able to make crops that are resistant to those pests or diseases through gene editing, which we have good evidence we can do, then we'll be able to cut down that loss of food and therefore be more productive with our land and also use significantly fewer pesticides and fewer herbicides on our land. Biodiversity gains are a substantial gain, as well as all the climate benefits that we can get from gene editing, we will have more resilient crops in the future.

Julia - Some of these ideas for gene-edited food sound pretty good, but public opinion about this produce is just one part of the puzzle, as Helen Anne Curry from Cambridge University explains...

Helen - I think there really remains a question about what kind of intellectual property controls there might be on some of these gene editing tools when patents are tightly controlled by their owners. Some of these possibilities for diverse users and diverse uses get shut down simply because institutions or individuals can't afford say the licensing fees on the technologies. So you then see only heavy hitting actors, such as the really big corporations involved in crop development. It also depends on what the regulatory structure looks like. So there are structures in place, for example, in the UK food system that ensure the quality of seeds that the crops that are produced conform to certain standards that make recommendations about what seeds farmers can buy and all of those different elements of the regulatory system channel. Or kind of winnow down the number of seeds, the number of traits, the number of varieties that we might find on the marketplace. And so in thinking about something like, "can gene editing diversify or open up the possibilities for genetic engineering of crops in new directions that are perhaps exciting that give us more opportunities for sustainability or for climate adaptation or even just for dietary improvement", we have to think about actually whether this whole system that we've set up in order to bring new varieties to market is conducive to that. And that's even before you get to the question of whether a food processing system can handle different kinds of crops, or whether supermarkets are willing to put them on the shelves or even indeed eaters becoming willing to consume them. The bottleneck is really in thinking of who's able to engage in the development of the foods we eat. And right now that is perhaps a narrower set of actors than we might wanna have.

Julia - So when it comes to having gene-edited foods on our supermarket shelves, never mind transgenic produce like the algae oil from crops. There are a lot of hoops to jump through beyond public opinion, but maybe one day in the future, we could all be checking out some produce that has been safely modified to help our health, satisfy our taste buds, protect the environment and can be grown more sustainably.