Member of legislation scrutiny committee exposes UK farm ministry’s manipulation of data to give impression that the public supports gene-edited food. Report: Claire Robinson
Fittingly, the UK government chose April Fools’ Day (1 April) to pass the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Regulations, without opposition or comment from the elected representatives in the House of Commons. The regulations scrap safeguards around GM foods and crops, enabling companies to release them without safety checks, traceability requirements, or labelling.
Now a member of a House of Lords committee that scrutinised the legislation has spoken out, criticising the government’s farm ministry DEFRA for justifying its GMO deregulation policy based on polling data that it tried – but failed – to keep secret.
Dr Mark Pack is a LibDem member of the House of Lords and member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (SLSC), which on 20 March published a highly critical report on the Genetic Technology Regulations. GMWatch and other groups submitted comments on the proposed legislation to the Committee in advance of publication of its report. As documented in the report, the Committee took these concerns seriously and asked the government to address them. However, the government ignored all concerns, including those raised by its own advisors, and went ahead with deregulation anyway.
One of the concerns highlighted by critical groups, including GMWatch, was lack of labelling for GM “precision bred organisms” (PBOs) and the foods made from them. On the labelling issue, the Committee commented in its report, “We are not convinced by DEFRA’s claim that only a minority of consumers would wish to avoid food containing PBOs” and therefore don’t need them to be labelled.
DEFRA, responding to the Committee in defence of its stance, referred to a YouGov survey it commissioned in 2022 which found that “over half (57%) of respondents thought the use of gene editing in crops/plants for food production was acceptable, 16% were undecided, while 27% thought the use was unacceptable”.
However, the Committee noted that it could not verify this claim as DEFRA “has not published the survey on the ground that it was commissioned for internal use only”. The Committee added that the submissions it had received “refer to other research which suggests that consumers may be more sceptical”.
The Committee asked DEFRA to share further information about the YouGov survey. DEFRA told the Committee that it was an online survey with a sample size of just over 2,000 adults. However, the Committee noted that the figures provided by DEFRA appeared to be in response to a single question in a larger survey: “We do not know precisely what question was asked, on which other issues feedback was sought or what the responses were to those other questions.”
In a damning comment, the Committee concluded, “Thus, it is impossible to assess the value of the Department’s evidence on this point, and therefore we do not consider this an acceptable use of data: if survey data cannot be published because it was commissioned for internal use only, it should not be subsequently drawn on… to justify potentially contentious policy decisions.”
Dr Pack contacted YouGov, pointing out that the poll was about a political issue and “is in part in the public domain”, so the details of the poll had to be published under the British Polling Council rules. YouGov duly published the data, which turned out to be revealing.
Dr Pack reports the context of that 57% of respondents who thought gene editing was acceptable. He writes that in fact: “A full 52% said in the poll that they had not even heard of genome/gene editing (the phrase used in the poll), and of the 48% who had, not all will have given it much thought... Moreover, of those who had heard of it, only 3% said they were ‘very well informed’ about it. As that is 3% of the 48%, it means that overall only 1.5% say they are very well informed about the topic they were being asked to give views on.”
That’s hardly the ringing endorsement for public support of gene editing in food and farming that DEFRA was claiming.
Biased and leading question
What’s more, the survey question that DEFRA cited was extraordinarily biased and was based on imaginary benefits of gene editing. GMWatch has long taken issue with survey questions along the lines of “GM can cure the blind, heal the lame and solve our food and farming problems. Are you in favour of it?” Thankfully, reputable polling firms refuse to ask what lawyers term “leading questions”, no matter who is commissioning them to do so (we know this from discussions with organisations that have commissioned surveys from these firms).
Yet somehow, the government managed to con YouGov (or was YouGov happy to help?) into asking the public: “Gene Editing is a scientific technique used to create targeted changes to part of a living thing's DNA to modify its existing characteristics providing beneficial traits such as resistance to disease or better productivity. These changes could also be achieved more slowly by traditional breeding in animals or plants. Having read this definition, how acceptable or unacceptable do you think the use of Gene Edited crops and plants for food production would be?” (Our emphases are added, to highlight biasing words.)
As Dr Pack states, this question “provides positives about PBOs without providing any possible negatives”. The predictable result? A majority (57%) of respondents thought gene editing is acceptable.
GMWatch readers will note that despite the biased question, those in favour of gene-edited foods still represent a small and underwhelming majority. It’s reasonable to ask how that figure might have changed in response to a more objectively accurate question, such as: “Gene editing is a genetic modification technique that aims to create targeted changes to a living thing’s DNA to modify its characteristics. However, despite the targeted nature of the initial DNA break, the rest of the gene editing process is prone to errors, resulting in unintended changes. Scientists warn that in plants, these changes could result in unexpected toxicity or allergenicity, or unpredictable effects on wildlife. In animals, gene editing could result in adverse health or welfare impacts. While gene editing could, in an idealised world, create changes that could also be achieved by traditional breeding, the changes could equally go far beyond what is possible in traditional breeding. Claimed benefits for gene editing of crops and animals, such as resistance to disease or better productivity, remain unproven. Having read this definition, how acceptable or unacceptable do you think the use of gene-edited crops and plants for food production would be?”
In case anyone thinks our question is just as biased as the one in the YouGov survey, though in the opposite direction, we’d be happy to see a question that sets YouGov’s definition of gene editing next to our definition. If the survey respondents had been presented with balanced information, it’s a no-brainer that they would have come to a different conclusion.
It is also worth noting that the survey question only asked people if they thought the use of this (positively described) technology was acceptable in food. It did not ask if they’d like to have a choice about consuming that food, or for others who had concerns to have that choice. In other words, there is a fallacy in saying because people find its use acceptable, that means they don’t want any transparency about whether it has been used.
“Neither realistic nor reasonable”: Committee’s verdict on lack of GMO labels
What of the SLSC report’s mention of the “other research which suggests that consumers may be more sceptical” of gene editing? The UK Food Standards Agency’s (FSA’s) own research found that nearly four in five (77%) survey respondents said it would be important when buying a food to know if it had been “precision bred”, and nearly half (45%) said it would be “very” important. Only one in six (15%) said knowing this would not be important.
Commenting on the labelling issue, the SLSC said: “We note that without mandatory labelling and unless producers label their food containing PBOs voluntarily, consumers would have to conduct their own research, including by accessing the new public registers to establish whether products they wish to buy may contain PBOs. We consider that it is neither realistic nor reasonable to expect consumers to carry out their own research using what are likely to be highly technical public registers. It is important that consumers will be able to access clear and non-technical information easily about food containing PBOs.”
This point and others raised by the SLSC report were not addressed by the government before it passed the GMO deregulation legislation, as GM Freeze put it, “without a whisper”.
These surreal and highly irregular events point to just one conclusion. There is just one aim behind GMO deregulation: to remove GMO labelling, thereby removing farmers’ and consumers’ right to know that a crop or food is genetically engineered, so that we can’t refuse to grow, buy, or eat them.
Image: Shutterstock. Licence available on request.