Around the turn of the century, the world embarked on an experiment. The Americas embraced the genetic modification of crops; Europe rejected it and stuck with the old ways of generating new plant varieties – bombarding seeds with gamma rays, mostly. The results are clear. Both economically and ecologically, the Americas won: more productive farmers, reduced use of pesticides, more investment in innovation, fewer emissions.

By the time of the Brexit vote in 2016, polls showed the British people were no longer against genetic modification of crops. Protests by boiler-suited eco-toffs had fizzled out. But European red tape made changing our policy impossible. Meanwhile, a new and even safer technology was becoming available: gene editing, or precision breeding, whereby scientists make tiny, precise changes to existing genes rather than introduce whole genes from other species. This is what they aim to do through traditional plant breeding anyway, just much, much faster and with fewer unintended consequences.

Precision breeding is the best way of achieving environmentally friendly goals such as minimal-spray growing

Almost nobody was against this new practice but the EU, in its inimitable way, insisted that member states ‘hold back on giving the all-clear on gene editing while it considered its options’, in the words of Nature magazine. Meanwhile, a referral of the issue by France to the European Court of Justice meandered towards a decision.

Allowing precision breeding should have been a quick and easy win for Brexit. Subject it to the same (fairly strict) rules as any other plant-breeding technique and judge experiments by their results, not their methods. Do this, some of us argued, and we could watch Britain begin to regain its previously world-leading scientific position in agricultural genetics to the benefit of scientists, farmers and butterflies alike. Better yields, pest-resistant crops, nutritionally enriched fruit, virus-resistant animals: all these and more would be within our grasp.

That is indeed where we are ending up, but by Jupiter it has been slow. Whitehall embarked on an ultra-cautious, lethargic procession of consultations and conversations. At times it seemed as if opportunities for regulatory empire building by bureaucrats were more important than the interests of consumers.

Eventually, though, the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act received Royal Assent in March 2023, almost seven years after the referendum. Hurray! Well, not quite. Nobody could start work until the secondary legislation to implement its regulations had been passed. Bureaucrats had apparently not bothered to begin work on this and it was not even published until February 2025, receiving full parliamentary approval in May 2025.

Hurray! Not quite. There followed a six-month World Trade Organisation implementation period before the new regulations finally came into force on 13 November 2025. Hurray! Not quite. Even now, says the biologist Dr Julian Little, the ‘National Listing’ of precision-bred seeds has not been issued and the industry is still impatiently awaiting a timescale for Defra to sort this out. Until it is, farmers cannot grow a precision-bred crop in England (Scotland and Wales are against the whole thing, of course), even though consumers are allowed to buy produce from precision-bred plants.

Still, at last there is a sensible set of rules in place. Instead of focusing on the methods, they define the outcome: anything that could have occurred in nature or through traditional breeding can be approved, however it is achieved. A dismal decade of dither during which America, China, Argentina, Brazil and other agricultural pioneers raced ahead is finally coming to an end.

Or is it? Predictably, the EU is moving sluggishly towards a much more prescriptive law that treats gene editing as uniquely different from other plant-breeding techniques, limiting the number of genomic changes allowed at one time, for example. And now Sir Keir Starmer is aiming to re-align Britain with the EU’s Sanitary and Phytosanitary rules, which could plunge us back into the European regulatory quicksand. Professor Mario Caccamo of Niab, Britain’s leading crop-science association, says: ‘Without an exemption for precision breeding, we could have to compromise our more progressive legislation, and potentially lose it altogether. That would sacrifice a rare Brexit dividend.’

A further irritating delay is that a High Court ruling this month in a case of judicial review has complicated the picture. Beyond GM, one of the few remaining diehard campaign groups on the issue, argued that gene-edited crops need to be labelled as such. This makes no sense for traits that could have been introduced by any technique. Do we expect sausage rolls to be labelled if they’re baked in gas ovens but not if they’re baked in electric ones? But a government minister was given bad advice by civil servants, citing the wrong legislation for his legal powers, so the court ruled in favour of the Luddites. That means a further delay.

The crazy part of all this is that precision breeding is a godsend to regenerative farmers, if only they would realise it. It is an organic technology by any definition and the best way of achieving environmentally friendly goals such as minimum-till planting and minimal-spray growing. Opposition to genetic technologies has only increased and prolonged British farmers’ dependence on chemicals.

The one precision-bred crop so far to receive a conditional permit to proceed to further trials and eventual commercialisation is a high-energy forage barley created at Rothamsted Research. It has a high lipid content that allows cattle and sheep to grow faster with fewer methane emissions. Other crops going through field trials include high-yielding garden peas, disease-resistant oilseed rape, early flowering soybeans and high-omega-3 camelina.

Elsewhere in the world, the list of gene-edited crops available to consumers is growing like Jack’s beanstalk: high-fibre wheat, virus-resistant tomato, salt-tolerant rice, anti-oxidant-rich and vitamin-D-rich tomato, longer-fruiting-season strawberry, drought-tolerant soybean, maize and rice, non-browning avocado, lettuce, banana and mushroom. Yum yum.