Post-Brexit: the future of GMOs

What does the future hold for GM after the UK leaves the EU, asks Soil Association. New rules for GM crops will be discussed after Brexit, Farming Minister George Eustace has confirmed. Some believe UK will move towards a more open approach to GM. But Soil Association policy director Peter Melchett is not so certain. He thinks it a move towards GM crops in the UK is even less likely after Brexit, as he told Farming Today.

Important reason he mentioned are that Scotland and Wales remain dead-set against GM technology. Also the future of UK farming will focus on exports to the EU and China, where GM is not accepted by consumers. “Farmers are likely, after we leave the EU, to be even more focused on the market and what their customers want than we have been under the Common Agricultural Policy. So it is even less likely that we’ll be going down the route of what’s now the very old technology of GM”, he said.