Talking Biotech Podcast 377

Brexit May Bring Gene Editing to the UK - with Cameron English
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Kevin Folta: [00:00:00] Hi everybody, and welcome to this week's Talking Biotech podcast by Colabra. Now as a scientist in plant biology, I have many colleagues in Europe. There's been some amazing work going on there, and I've had many visitors in my laboratory over the years who came to do different parts of their work in a laboratory in the.

most of them share a common lament, and that's the technology that they create. Solutions that could help farmers or help the environment. They'll never see the field, at least in their lifetime. It's because protectionist policies have handcuffed farmers as NGOs and a handful of misinformed folks in the population have forced an onerous regulatory hand on anything to do with plant biotechnology.

I think the last gene, genetically engineered crop to be [00:01:00] approved was sometime in the 1990s, and ever since then, any seeds that have gone in for approval have died on the vine. And companies just pull the applications because the EU will not approve anything genetically.

but then there was Brexit. The departure of the UK from the EU was a big. It was kind of cool because I was there at the time and I was speaking with parliament in Northern Ireland. Had a wonderful time, excellent folks there. Some very progressive, science minded parliamentarians. I was there with Mark Linus.

We had a good time there. Some folks were very supportive. Genetic engineering, but for most of them still on the. Nowadays, while we can debate the political and economical developments around Brexit, one positive is that the UK has amazing science going on, both [00:02:00] basic and applied, and being free of the regulatory environment of the EU opportunity knocks.

And new policy is on the table regarding gene editing, and that's what we'll talk about today. So today's guest is my co-host from Science Facts and Fallacies Heard every week at the Gene Genetic Literacy Project, Cameron English. He's actually the host. I'm the co-host. Hey, welcome to the podcast, Cameron.

Hey, 

Cameron English: Kevin. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, it's 

Kevin Folta: kind of fun. We did like a end of year one a couple years ago, maybe last year, where we recapped some stories, but I wanted to get together with you now to talk about this report that you. Prepared. And so let's start out with what it is who commissioned this report and are they just another front group for Mon Santo

Cameron English: Oh, the classic corporate shill. We always gotta deal with it. Okay. Well, the report is is called Harvest Time. Why the UK should [00:03:00] unleash the Power of Gene. And we'll get in, in, in just a second. So what we're talking about there. But the report was put out for the Institute of Economic Affairs in the uk.

They're headquartered in LU in London, and they are they're a free market, think take. So they promote capitalism and libertarianism. And when it comes to issues like this, Their big, their big push is to get rid of regulations that don't make sense. And you've talked about it a lot on talking biotech.

We've talked about it on science facts and fallacies, where you have a lot of countries around the world where they just have these needless regulations that are based on the precautionary principle and they do anything and everything they can to keep any kind of biotech crop off the. And this was a real problem in England and in the UK more generally when they were part of the European Union.

But after, after Brexit, which started in 2016, they left the European Union. So now they have. National control over these sorts of regulations in agriculture. And now the, the conversation is [00:04:00] underway and there's a piece of legislation in Parliament that would authorize the use of gene editing technology first in plants and then in animals.

So this is a big, big step forward. And the point of this report is it's geared at policymakers in England. It's to give them the facts that they need to walk into this debate and understand what's going on. . I pushed it in this report. I said, yes, gene editing is excellent. Here's all the science that shows that it can be used safely.

Here's what it's doing around the world right now. That's a placeholder. Let's go talk about transgenic crops. Now let's talk about GMOs. Let's talk about all the benefits your country has missed out on billions upon billions of dollars. Tons and tons of carbon that could have been pulled outta the atmosphere.

Tons and tons of pesticides that didn't have to be sprayed, but you sprayed 'em. Anyway, here's what you're missing. Here's why you need to unleash all of the these bio technologies. for the benefit of your agricultural sector and for your country more generally. 

Kevin Folta: I see. So, so this was [00:05:00] out of London and did they hire you because your last name is English

Cameron English: Yes. They said your name is English and we also heard that you're a Monsanto shill. And that's what we like here in England is we like Monsanto shells. No, it's because it's. As, as, as part of my work at the American Council on Science and Health, I keep tabs on different regulatory discussions around the world as it relates to crop biotechnology.

And I also was part of a big project for the genetic literacy project a couple years ago where we were you know, sort of monitoring the different regulatory environments. And so this is a, an issue of interest to me. And I had written a lot about what's going on in, in the UK cuz they've got really cool projects.

You know, they've got disease-resistant wheat that's being developed. They've got tomatoes that you can eat that will boost your vitamin D level. Of course we've talked about the blight resistant potato that was developed in the uk. That's a transgen crop, not a gene edited one. But nonetheless, you have all these interesting projects in the works.

and they get to a certain level of [00:06:00] success, and then they just sit on the shelf in the lab because you can't do anything with it. And so this is a, this is a big deal for, for the researchers over there and you know, many of them personally. , and I'm just real passionate about this as an advocate of technology and, you know, giving people the freedom to make good decisions for themselves.

Kevin Folta: Yeah. And I, I love it. I, I, there's so many good scientists that are there in the uk and whether you're talking about what's happening at Roth Stead, which is a, you know, for one of the oldest, if not the oldest institution in terms of Application of agricultural technologies to what's going on at John Ennis and all the other places that are there.

It it just such a great cadre of scientists who have the right interests in their hearts. So what, what are they pushing against or what was happening in the EU that did not allow. Scientists in England as part of the EU to to use gene editing or any kind of other genetic engineering. What's the stance [00:07:00] globally that Brexit alleviated?

Cameron English: Yeah, great question and we need to definitely cover this in, in a little bit of detail. So in the European Union, any sort of biotech crop, whether it's, you know, whether, whether it was developed with CRISPR Cas nine, or whether it was some other te. , they're all considered GMOs, right? Everything's a GMO

You know, the more precise the technology gets, the more scared of it. We are . So it's any kind of crop biotechnology or animal biotechnology, very tightly regulated. And the European Union, . And it's basically at the point, and it was funny, you were the first scientist who told me this many years ago, Kevin, but companies like Bayer and Syngenta, these different biotech companies, they've basically just given up on trying to get transgenic crops approved for cultivation in Europe.

They just, it like, it's not technically impossible, but it's such a byzantine process. It's so expensive, it's so time consuming. They just have washed their hands of it and they've gone to. Other, other countries to get things approved. And just to underscore how, how [00:08:00] troubling this is, there's a single variety of insect-resistant corn that was developed by Monsanto that is grown in Portugal and Spain, and that was approved in 1998.

So all these years later, all of the technological advancements that we've seen and talked about on our shows, and that's been discussed in the peer reviewed literature, it's, it's utterly past Europe. . And so after Brexit, people in the UK and more specifically in England, cuz the UK is more than one, one country, but in England, they're starting to look at the situation and they're going, you know, we've missed out on a lot of income for our farmers.

We've missed out on a lot of techno technological benefits that could protect our environment. And they're finally starting to, you know, take an inventory and go, you know, maybe we should start to change. 

Kevin Folta: And when they're talking about gene editing, are they talking about these small deletions that are being made, or are these insertions, or what exactly are they looking at as the first wave of permissible technologies?[00:09:00] 

Cameron English: Yeah, very, very broadly. It's called precision breeding. The bill that's under consideration in parliament right now, it's called the, the Precision breeding bill. Very simple title. But basically it applies to breeding techniques like Crispr Cas nine and some of these other gene editing techniques, some of these DNA silencing techniques that we've talked about on the show like, like RNA interference and so forth.

And it's, it's the, the activists have so thoroughly dominated this conversation that even when you talk about approval, you're still arguing in the framework that they've set up. So, They're, they're allowing gene editing because you're not inserting DNA from quote unquote, you know, foreign, foreign organisms.

Right. You're not cra crossing that species boundary that everyone's so scared of. And I tackle that in the report to, to explain why that's fallacious thinking. But in any case, The law, as it stands would say, okay, as long as you're making edits to the existing genome of the target organism, or you're deleting, you know, a segment of DNA or whatever, that's [00:10:00] okay.

We're confident that this is safe, and I think this is primarily political, right? You have the people in charge, you have the regulators who understand how scandalous this debate has been over the decades, and they're trying to nudge the ball forward very, very gently. . And as I said a minute ago, my approach is let's just kick the ball all the way down the field and get it as far as we can, you know, and then let the politicians compromise and negotiate.

You just put the truth out there, get the science out there, and then let's take it from there. 

Kevin Folta: Oh, very good. So what, what about the rest of the world? Like what are the regulations on this kind of genetic engineering? Currently, like in places like, you know, whatever New Zealand or us, like what, what is the benchmark now that England is seeking to meet?

Cameron English: well, let me point people to a website. This is one of the projects that I worked on with the Genetic Literacy Project, but it's it's just called CRISPR Gene Editing Regulation Tracker. It's a very, very sexy title, [00:11:00] but if if you go to this website, G l P updates this, and it's just, it's like a heat map with all of the docu documentation of how gene editing is regulated around the.

So you can click on different countries and it's rated in terms of how they regulate some of this technology. But to answer your question, it varies. You know, if you go to a country like the United States, the regulations are, are. Pretty liberal in the sense that they're not overbearing when it comes to plants, for example.

But on animal biotechnology, it's very, very strict and to the point that you have a lot, not a lot, but you have some scientists who work in animal biotechnology who are going to Brazil and they're going to other countries. That have a more sensible regulatory environment. So it tends to vary. But I think what the UK is looking at, they're looking at the United States, they're looking at Brazil, they're looking at Argentina, some of these countries who are basically taking what's called a risk-based approach.

And they're saying if there's something inherent in the product, That could make it potentially dangerous. We're gonna look at that more carefully, but we don't care about how it was [00:12:00] developed because that doesn't tell you about its risks or its benefits, you know? So for example, if you have a crop that is herbicide tolerant or, or insect resistant, right?

You're engineering the plant to produce a pesticide effectively. And so that at least hypothetically presents some kind of risk that we need to look at in some detail before we approve it. , we're not gonna look at it and say, oh, well it's, it's transgenic, or it's gene edited. Therefore it gets a higher level of scrutiny.

And they're saying let's look at the product itself. Let's not look at the process through which it was developed. 

Kevin Folta: Yeah, and I think that's pretty fair because the products are identical in terms of what's in the, you know, carton or what's in the ingredient that would eventually go into food. And maybe the best example, and I like to always mention this one because it's, it's such a stellar example.

They used mutation breeding to make barley mutation in barley that makes it resistant to certain fungi, fungal diseases. and that mutation, they figured out where it is, what gene it's in, [00:13:00] and wheat has the same gene, but it doesn't have the mutation that causes the resistance to the fungus. And so here, here's an example, these two relatives that you can't breed together to get.

You know, a product that's worth anything. So how do you get that same trait and wheat? Well, you could mutt it and, and expose it to radiation and everything else and hope maybe someday you hit that gene without screwing up the quality genes that are there. Or you can create surgically an exact match of the barley mutation in wheat, because now wheat would, can have that resistance and it works.

But this would be something that would be forbidden in the eu even though they're even though they, they would benefit greatly from having wheat that had a a gene, a fungal susceptibility gene that no longer was. Functioning. So now they've basically made a copy of the [00:14:00] mutation in barley in wheat.

I think it's such a stellar example and it really points out how silly this entire discussion is. 

Cameron English: It's ridiculous. And let me elaborate on what you just said, cuz it's an important point. In 2014, the U USDA's National Organic Standards Board, Conducted an investigation. They put together an expert panel, and they were looking at the different breeding techniques that produced all of these organic, you know, organic, certified organic products that the U S D.

U S D A licenses and you know, so they're like, okay, disease resistant tomatoes developed with embryo rescue, which in introduces resistance genes, wheat and barley is another example. And then you have seedless, tangerines, and mandarins mutations introduced through irradiation, which is typically called mutation breeding or mutagenesis.

You have all of these different organic crops that have been developed with technologies that are more or less. Equivalent to these modern gene editing techniques, but they're less precise [00:15:00] because, you know, people have heard the, the copy and paste analogy or you, you know, you're going into the genome with some scissors and you're very precisely snipping a particular segment of dna n a.

That's basically what a mutation is, right? You know, it could happen in nature. It could happen because you drench seeds in you know, mutt chemicals or radiation, right? . And so what they found in this report, they're like, basically we can't identify all of these mutations or how they were induced.

And the point of the article that I'm looking at right now, this is by Dr. Mary Mangan, who's a, who is a biologist, and she's written pretty extensively about this stuff. The the point is, is that you can't tell the difference between a gene edited crop and a traditionally bred one or a mutt one. It's just a mutation in the organism's dna.

There's no way to identify what. . And so the whole point is that this whole debate, it's just utterly silly. All of these concerns about which breeding technique you used. It's, it's all invented. It's all an activist marketing campaign, and so that's why I'm excited to see the [00:16:00] UK or, or England, excuse me, breaking away from this.

Slowly but surely. 

Kevin Folta: Oh, very good. So we're speaking with Cameron English. He's the director of Biosciences and the American Council on Science and Health, and we're talking about. Brexit and its effect on gene editing and the potential for new technologies to be a part of England's dossier of technologies that will be allowable in cultivation.

So this is a Talking Biotech podcast by Collabora, and we'll be back in just a moment. And now we're back on the Talking Biotech podcast. We're speaking with Cameron English. He's the Director of Biosciences at the American Council on Science and Health, and the co-host of the Famous Science Facts and Fallacies podcast which you can listen to anywhere where you absorb podcast media and we're talking about.

England's adjustment with a plant breeding bill that's on the table that may change the [00:17:00] science that scientists in England can use to create plants that actually can get to the field. So this is really exciting. What has to happen next in order for this to happen? 

Cameron English: Well, from what I've heard from my, from my people in in England right now, cuz I've been in touch with some scientists over.

And what seems to be expected is that the bill is gonna be come, it's gonna become a lot, at some point in early 2023, so hopefully in a couple months. Currently, right now it's in the committee stage in Parliament. It's in the House of Commons and it, it's very similar to the process that we have here with Congress, where once a bill is introduced into.

either the Senate or the House, it goes to whatever committee is relevant to it, and the committee goes over it and they make changes and they argue about it. So at this point, , they're going through this thing line by line. It's called the Precision Breeding bill. You can follow this online if you just go to the Parliament's website if you're curious.

But they go through it line by [00:18:00] line, and they go, okay, this means thus and so it's gonna restrict this, it's going to approve this. And they're arguing their way through it. So it's a very time consuming process, but they're going through it very carefully. And you also have. You know, public comments, right?

You have scientists and you know, institutions like John Ennis, as Kevin mentioned a minute ago. You have the activist groups over there as well who are doing everything they can to bring this thing to a halt. You have, of course, all the newspapers talking about it and so forth. So it's going slowly but surely.

And I, of course, we can't predict the future, but what I've heard from people who are in the know is that this is probably gonna become law at some point in early 2023. How, 

Kevin Folta: how likely is it that someone like Prince Charles can derail this? Because he's a, he's like a total nutter when it comes to like, homeopathy and an very antigen genetic engineering you know, pre-organic, all that stuff.

And so he, he, you know, is there any potential for some of that movement to really [00:19:00] effectively derail this? Or are they, does it seem like they're really letting the science do the. 

Cameron English: It's hard to say, you know, like I said, we don't know the future, so it is possible that the, the bill could be watered down further and something passes, but it really doesn't implement any changes.

That was one concern i e a had when I was on their podcast cuz they see this a lot, right? You see this kind of, you see politicians promise that they're gonna change the way things are done. Then they get in power and it just gets worse. so, That's always a risk. My my perception for now is that the bill is gonna become law.

It is going to affect some significant change in that you will start to see some gene edited crops commercialized. There'll be a lot of controversy. There'll be a lot of fighting. There'll probably laws, probably will be lawsuits. , but it will be a big step in the right direction. That's what I'm hoping.

That's what I think is happening. I don't think the royal family has a lot of political power. That's my understanding is that they're sort of figureheads maybe in terms [00:20:00] of the influence they have on public or public perception perhaps. But I think what I would be more concerned about is these activist groups whispering in some politicians here.

and, and trying to edit the bill in some way or to stall it before it gets passed. You know, that's possible. I don't think that's gonna happen, but you know, I've been wrong before, so we'll just have to wait and see. 

Kevin Folta: How progressive scientifically are there rules towards animal genetic engineering with gene editing?

Cameron English: They're potentially very good. The, the big holdup right now, and the reason they're, they're doing this and what they call a stepwise approach is that, you know, animals obviously feel pain. They perceive the world around them to a certain extent. And so there's a lot of concern about animal welfare. One of the criticism that's co that's common among activist groups and even some people in in the scientific community, Kevin, is they'll say, well, if you allow researchers to use CRISPR to immunize pigs against an infectious disease, for example, farmers are gonna mistreat the pigs, right? They're gonna, they're gonna stuff them in these [00:21:00] pins and, and they're gonna just, they're gonna, they're gonna be factory farmed products, and there's gonna be more pollution, and there's gonna be more antibiotics, and they're gonna get away with this because this technology.

Keeps the pigs from getting sick. Now, Kevin, you're, you're a farmer. You understand the fallacy in this, and I encourage everyone, if you believe this argument, just talk to a farmer. Talk to somebody who raises animals, and what they'll tell you is that treating your animals well allows them to produce more, whether it's meat or milk, or there's some other product that you're trying to get from the animals.

If they're healthy, if they're if they're raised well, if they're comfortable, they're going. Produce more. And if you're a farmer, that's why you do it. Or at least one of the reasons you do it is you're making a living, right? So you want the animals to be healthy so they produce more. And that's one reason I don't find this argument very compelling.

I understand why it resonates with people, especially, you know, you see those ads with Sarah Michelle Golan and she's playing the guitar, and then there's the sad music , and you see the animal in the background. You know, the poor little [00:22:00] animal, and she says like, you know, for just 18 cents a day, you can stop animal cruelty or whatever, right?

This imagery resonates with people, so I understand why this is the argument and this is where we're, we're settling for now. , but the argument I make in the report is that the research is very clear on this. Editing plants is really not that much different than editing animals. In fact, you're improving animal welfare cuz you're preventing them from getting sick and you're preventing them from dying and you're reducing the need to use drugs, like antibiotics to treat them when they get sick.

So this is, this is great. You know, and of course, again, Kevin, you can speak to this too, when you get animals that are sick, the best way to deal with that sometimes is just to kill the sick animals so they can't infect the other animals around them, you know? So this is it. We have very blunt instruments for dealing with this kind of stuff right now.

So this would be a huge step forward if they were to green light animal gene editing. Yeah. 

Kevin Folta: When every time those commercials come on, I make my dog watch it and go see how good you got it . Yeah, [00:23:00] that's but you're exactly right. One of the things we get at the farmer's market all the time is you use antibiotics and people say, you know, cause we sell chicken eggs and duck eggs, turkeys, and all that stuff.

I tell people the same thing every time. You don't use antibiotics in a sub-therapeutic way on the farm, it doesn't done anywhere anymore. Mostly because it doesn't work. The genetics are too good, and I will tell them that every time we have a sick animal, damn right, I'll use antibiotics because that's my.

Commitment to the animal. And even if I don't make another penny off that animal's products, you know, whatever they are I can't have a sick animal here. And it, it's just the way we run things. It, it's, you know, we are so freaky about making sure they have the best food and clean water and clean pens and clean everything, and it's a huge amount of work for us to take care of them.

But when one of them gets a problem or gets attacked by a predator or, you know, hawk or so, He gets a chicken and I [00:24:00] gotta stitch it back together. Damn right. I use antibiotics on that wound. And it's because that animal, it isn't a dollars and cents thing. It's a hundred percent the ethics of raising animals in a, in a reasonable way.

And if I had a gene editing gene edited a gene editing solution for something like avian influenza. . Which, which actually there was a transgenic solution that was proposed in 2011 by Helen Sang and other folks up in up in gosh, I'm blanking on this, the place where they did Dolly the sheep up in Rosalind Institute.

Yeah. They they had a solution 2011 that blocked transmission. of avian influenza. And if you think about how many birds, how many millions of birds have been bulldozed in that 11 years, it's absolutely stunning that we can't use that technology. . 

Cameron English: And another great example, this, and there's been research on this in the [00:25:00] uk it's it's called Porcine, reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome, or P R R S.

There's a gene editing solution for this. And it, it causes reproductive failure on the animals and, and respiratory conditions. And it's, it's fatal. It kills, it kills the animals, and they can infect one another with them. It's, it's terrible. It's, it's, it's suffering that you can prevent, but it, but in any case, You can effectively immunize the animals from birth and, and it's, and it's highly effective.

And of course there's the animal welfare aspect that we've talked about, but this disease costs farmers in the US. Hundreds of millions of dollars. Pig farmers, right? It's, it's incredibly expensive. And again, this is one of the, the ironies that we talk about when we talk about biotechnology, Kevin, is that when you restrict or you outlaw these technologies, you have to use more drugs and there's more suffering and it's more expensive.

You know, it's just, They have it exactly backwards. The activist groups and the, and the environmental activists who are against this technology, they have it exactly backwards. We agree on the outcome. We want improved [00:26:00] animal welfare. We want abundant access to food, especially for people that need to stretch their dollars as far as they can.

Because they don't have that much money. And this is one of the ways you do that is on the, on the production side, you allow these technologies to be used and everybody benefits. 

Kevin Folta: No. Very good. And then these are the technologies you mentioned for animals. You mentioned purs, which is a big deal. I mean, that's a really big one.

There's east African sign, swine fever virus. There's a whole bunch of porcine. Viruses that at least look like they may have some solutions that can come from biotechnology. And, you know, the, the, I think, you know, you said millions of dollars. Or, you know, you just kind of threw a ballpark number out there, but I believe it's something like millions of dollars per day that lead to many billions per year.

And I don't have those numbers in front of me, but these pig viruses, there was a in China maybe last year, year before, they had to call something like 50% of the pigs [00:27:00] in production. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Cause of. African swine fever virus. So these are real problems that, that, that we can solve with biotech.

When we talk about plants again, what are some examples of some of the biotech plants that are currently prime for deregulation? In the uk? They're in England, I should say. 

Cameron English: Yeah. There there's a handful that are, that are either close to development or they've been developed. One of course that we've talked about on our other show is a gene edited tomato that they've tweaked a particular enzyme, the amount of enzyme that's produced by the tomato, and when you consume it, it boosts your vitamin D levels.

And you know, you don't think about this if you live in particular parts of the United States where there's a lot of sun, but England is a very cloudy, very rainy place. So you have a lot of people there. One in six people in the UK are vitamin D deficient. It's the same thing if you live in, in the Pacific Northwest in the United States like Seattle or Portland, you know, [00:28:00] vitamin D deficiency is a problem and you have seasonal depression in a lot of people because they don't get enough sun, and as a result they don't get enough vitamin D.

And so in a place like England, this is a very practical Benefit from this technology. And as we've talked about many times, Kevin, this is a consumer facing trait. You know, so when you talk about something like herbicide tolerance or, or insect resistance, these are very important traits for farmers and they do benefit consumers.

Down the line, but it's, it, it can be difficult to explain why that technology is important to the mom who's shopping for groceries for the week for her kids. Right. It's, it's, it's harder to explain that. Whereas if you say, see how the sky's cloudy and how you gotta take vitamin D supplements, here's a tomato that'll help with that.

And it's been, it's been reviewed by regulators. They've said it safe. Let me explain the technology to you. Right? Something like that. pretty straightforward sales pitch. And I mean that, you know, not like you're trying to sell them something, but just to explain how it works, it's easier to do that. And there's many other examples we can talk about, but I really like that one because you [00:29:00] say, look, it's, you eat tomatoes, you have no problem with vitamin D , right?

What if we, when our powers combined, we , we're a vitamin D boosted tomato. It's, it's these kind of applications that are powerful, that are, that are simple to explain, that could make a difference in people's. 

Kevin Folta: Yeah, and then you don't have to take the vitamin D supplement that came from a bacterium that was genetically engineered with a vitamin D synthetic pathway.

Cameron English: the ironies, 

Kevin Folta: you know, it's so speciesist, rightist, , you know, like it's cool if it comes out of a bacterium, but not out of a tomato. There's so many good ones that are on the, on the. Block there. Whether you're talking about we talked about the ones that made precursors for dopamine. We were talking about that's transgenic, but we were talking about there's a lot of there's sugarbeet genes that have been engineered to resist a certain virus.

There's wheat and a whole bunch of other stuff that's going on there that are really close to commercialization. If they were to get through regulat, [00:30:00] Yeah, so, so very, very good stuff that's cooking over there. Any other real good last thoughts on this in terms of timeline as when this could happen?

I think I kind of asked you about that before, but does this seem like something that 2023 could lift that veil and allow English scientists to start commercializing te. 

Cameron English: Yeah, that's what it's looking like. I mean, obviously once the, the, the bill becomes law, if that does indeed happen, then you're gonna have a case by case regulatory process in place.

So, for example, the sugar bee that you mentioned, that's being developed by a British sugar, you know, once they're done on, on the development side of that, then they're gonna submit it for regulatory approval and then it has to go through They have over there, it's sort of like our F D A, it's called the Food Standards Agency.

But they, they will do a risk assessment of that product and they'll say, okay, what's, what's the risk to public health? And then there'll be another regulatory body that will say, what's the environmental impact? You know, could this, you know, could , could a crazy sugar bee fly away and infect, you know, some, you know, all these [00:31:00] other, right.

You and I understand that these are sort of silly concerns, but these are the kind of things that they're gonna look at. . And then once they get approval for that, then it'll go into commercial production. So there, there's a long lag once the law is passed. But it's just a massive step forward. And, and like I, like I said earlier, I'm really pushing to say, look, gene editing's awesome.

Let's, let's pair it with GMOs. They're transgenesis, right? Let's get these both through the door. Let's get all the technologies through the door. Let's use everything. , let's use things for the, the trait they're best suited to develop. And this is how you benefit everyone. Like, like your tagline for people on the planet, right?

This is . This is what we're after here, folks, is that we want, we want, you know, a cleaner environment. We want abundant food for everybody, right? I I have a young son. It's a joy to feed him breakfast in every morning because I have a fridge full of affordable. and, and it's fun to watch him eat cuz he's growing and he is like, oh, I love eggs.

Yeah, I love, you know what I mean? [00:32:00] I. people all around the world to have access to that. And obviously food security is not a terrible problem in England, but there are examples where this technology could really benefit people. So let's blow the doors off. Let's do this. That's the whole point of the report.

There you go. And, and 

Kevin Folta: England English farmers could sure use some assistance. It, this isn't getting any easier over there in the high cost of production. There's certainly. Impinging upon productivity and I would love to see solutions for farmers too. So really exciting times to bring new technology for people and the planet.

And, you know, , as it said. But Cameron, thank you very much for your time on this today. I really appreciate it. And if people wanna find the report to take a peek at that, where would they look? 

Cameron English: You can go to i e.org.uk cuz they're based in, in the uk. So don't forget that that dog you can on the end. But again, the report is called Harvest Time.

Why the UK should unleash the power of gene editing. If you just Google that, you'll find it. Or if you go to at I e a London on Twitter, [00:33:00] they, they've tweeted about it and you can read all about it. It's free. It's been peer reviewed, so this is not me. kind of spouting off my opinions. This has been looked at.

I guess it wouldn't be peer review. In my case it would be smarter than me review . Cause they got a bunch of, they got a bunch of really qualified PhDs to, to look this over. So this is good science. That's, that's been evaluated by experts. So this is good information, so go read it. I, I do appreciate.

Kevin Folta: No. Very good. It's a really nice report. It's super concise. It gets right to the point. It's written in a level that anybody can pick it up and understand it. Really, really well done. Great summary in the beginning. That makes it nice and easy to navigate. Bullet points that make it nice and easy. So check it out and thank you very much Cameron and I'll talk to you on science Facts and Fallacies, episode 200 coming up.

Cameron English: Yeah, buddy, thank you so much for having me. It was my pleasure. 

Kevin Folta: Yeah. And for everybody else listening, thank you very much for listening to another episode of Collabs Talking Biotech podcast. Write a review on iTunes. Maybe help us out [00:34:00] by spreading the word. Those retweets really make a difference.

Retweet, share on Facebook, whatever your network is important. The podcast, so get that thing out there for us. Thank you very much for listening to The Talking Biotech podcast, and we'll talk to you again next week.