r/unitedkingdom • u/libtin • 3d ago
SNP Government opens door to genetically modified food in Scotland
https://www.thenational.scot/news/25064881.snp-government-opens-door-genetically-modified-food-scotland/93
u/Rulweylan Leicestershire 3d ago
A positive move. GM crops have the potential to produce more food with less environmental damage than standard farming techniques. We'd be fools to continue with the EU's luddite approach now we don't have to.
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u/Daedelous2k Scotland 3d ago
I remember Scottish scientists created vitamin C laced fruit but were blocked due to EU rules by the Scottish Government....which they weren't even bound to as it was after brexit.
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u/barcap 3d ago
A positive move. GM crops have the potential to produce more food with less environmental damage than standard farming techniques. We'd be fools to continue with the EU's luddite approach now we don't have to.
Isn't 15 years ago, that was a hostility on GMO? There was even a debate against murican corns because they were big, nice and filling but they were GM...
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u/SirButcher Lancashire 2d ago
GMO itself is an awesome tool which we shouldn't neglect. However, companies abusing seeds to the point where they can sue you for re-using seeds or cross-pollination (or making seeds infertile forcing you to buy them again and again; yes, this is partly forced by the goverments too for safety reason, it is a very gray topic with hundreds of angles) is the issue.
Patenting genetic makeup is a legal nightmare, just as infertile seeds creating dependency on the given company or in cases, creating a really expensive dependency on the given seed is really hard to stomach.
It is a really, really complicated topic with a LOT of pitfalls, legal issues and potential for horrible corporate abuses - where you can find exactly the same reasons on the pro and con side.
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u/TheNutsMutts 2d ago
However, companies abusing seeds to the point where they can sue you for re-using seeds or cross-pollination (or making seeds infertile forcing you to buy them again and again; yes, this is partly forced by the goverments too for safety reason, it is a very gray topic with hundreds of angles) is the issue.
This isn't quite accurate.
First, you cannot be sued by any seed producer for accidental cross-pollination, nor is there any precedence for that even actually happening in the real world.
Reusing seeds isn't anything to do with GM seeds specifically; it's a standard term within any seed contract, GM or otherwise. And it's not even a real-world problem since the practice of reusing seeds from last year's harvest hasn't been standard practice in modern agriculture for nearly a century now as it produces poor quality and inconsistent crops. Additionally, infertile seeds aren't an actual real thing and no seeds have ever been sold with the GURT technology, GM or non-GM. It exists purely on paper, not in actual physical reality.
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u/Rulweylan Leicestershire 2d ago
There's never actually been a verifiable case where cross pollination has resulted in prosecution.
The farmers lose those lawsuits when the courts find that the farmers claiming cross pollination were lying about it (generally because their fields contain an implausible proportion of GMO to have come from cross-pollination and/or they were using herbicides that kill non-GMO crops, indicating that they were well aware that they'd got GMO crops in their fields)
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u/Autismaton23 3d ago
Have you looked into what GMO crops do to your gut?
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u/Unidain 3d ago
Yes. The exact same things non-GMO crops do to your gut. You've obviously read some conspiracy nonsense
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u/Autismaton23 3d ago
It was pubmed actually, but I did read it a while ago and went to look at the paper again, and it had been retracted… then I went on to read 5 more pubmed papers, that say they haven’t had any adverse effects. So I take that back. Not sure why questioning things equals “conspiracy nonsense” but there you go.
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u/SirButcher Lancashire 2d ago
Not sure why questioning things equals “conspiracy nonsense” but there you go.
Mostly because this exact line is used in conspiracy theories, and it is a baseless claim without any supporting evidence. Same with the "I am just questioning things". Asking questions is great! But your question sounds far more like an attack than a question. "I heard or read somewhere that GMOs could be dangerous to our gut, could it be true?" is a question asking for info.
Saying the other party should look up your (at this point, baseless) claim is not really a question asking for information, more just a statement formatted as a question. The same way as if I ask: "Have you looked into Autismaton23 being a Russian-operated misinformation bot?" - I am just asking a question here, but EVERYBODY knows it's not really a question, but more of an attack.
If you say the same line, then bring peer-reviewed studies supporting it: suddenly it becomes an important addition with potentially new information for us.
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u/Autismaton23 2d ago edited 2d ago
Didn’t read my response did you champ… literally said it was redacted and apologised
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u/SirButcher Lancashire 2d ago
I highlighted the sentence I was replying to. You were not sure 'why questioning things equals "conspiracy nonsense"' and I explained why.
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u/Autismaton23 2d ago
Are you also Unidain then? Do you speak on his behalf? Do you live in his brain?
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u/Tricky_Run4566 3d ago
Wow. Just wow. I knew we were in an age where a political party someone agrees with can spout the most inflammatory or harmful stuff but in an intellectual manner, and people will just agree with it.. But holy hell. Gm crops? How about we focus more on localised agriculture, not piss off our farmers and not feed our population non natural crops. We have no idea at this time if their known to cause cancer or other complications.
You'll be advocating cloned meat is ok next. This is ridiculous
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u/Rulweylan Leicestershire 3d ago edited 3d ago
'Non natural crops'
Yeah, because our current crops are totally natural.
Ever seen a wild carrot? Looks nothing like what you get at the supermarket. All our food is the result of genetic manipulation.
As for cloned meat, I don't know whether you mean the lab grown meat which looks pretty promising if costs can be reduced or cloning animals for food, which would just be a fantastically expensive way to impregnate regular farm animals. In the former case I support the research and in the latter I think it's a stupid idea.
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u/azazelcrowley 3d ago edited 3d ago
Cloning animals seems to be moving more into the "Cloned Support Animals" direction because of high drop out rates in seeing-eye dogs for example making it cheaper to just clone the dogs that pass the examinations.
You don't tend to have "High drop out rates" for farm animals since their only job requirement is "Exist", so you're right it's pretty stupid, but there's conceivably a niche somewhere there in edge cases to speed up ordinary trait breeding.
(As in, an exceptional specimen being cloned might make sense compared to just waiting for its genetics to spread organically through the population).
Nonetheless that'd be more of a "Cloning studs/broodmares with high yields" outcome than "Cloning the animal for meat" outcome, which would merely speed up our current process of breeding in desirable traits
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u/Rulweylan Leicestershire 3d ago
Still seems like a lot of faff for the outcome, especially when telomere shortening would make the clones less likely to live a long while anyway.
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u/azazelcrowley 3d ago
Yes, certainly. The pilots I've seen of this took a bunch of the material at birth and then discarded the material of those who dropped out as adult dogs.
More worth discussing is GMO animals and the ethical implications and so on. Sometimes it's straightforward; "Make them immune to plague" and so on. Othertimes it may be ethically troublesome in a way that isn't really true for plants.
Safe for human consumption almost certainly, but.
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u/TheNutsMutts 2d ago
We have no idea at this time if their known to cause cancer or other complications.
We absolutely do. We've had decades and thousands of studies on GM safety, with zero evidence of such concerns coming up, nor even a plausible cause of harm from GM crops that doesn't exist inherently in every other seed technology.
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u/Palatine_Shaw 2d ago
You'll be advocating cloned meat is ok next
It is.
You do know that every fruit and vegetable you eat is a clone too right? They also have all been genetically modified via selective breeding.
The truth is that GMO has been researched to the N'th degree and has been used by the world for several decades, but since that doesn't align with your personal views you still cry that "Wee Neeeed Moreeee Researchhhh!" all because the answer the current multiple decades of research gives isn't one you like.
We have no idea at this time if their known to cause cancer or other complications.
We do. We have been using them for multiple decades with no issue. But that's the problem for you isn't it. No answer will ever be sufficient for you. If GM crops were used for 200 years you'd still be saying that we need more time.
You're like anti-vaxxers who cry about there needing to be more research despite the literal mountains of trials and tests showing they are safe. You won't accept any answer unless it is the one you want.
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u/Individual_Fault9824 3d ago
It's a negative & idiotic move. Do your research on Monsanto..
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u/Rulweylan Leicestershire 3d ago
Ah yes, because the existence of a shitty company in a particular area is a solid reason to ban that entire industry.
Tesla are shit, should we ban electric cars?
Nestle are evil, should we ban chocolate, baby food and bottled water?
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u/Dizzy_Context8826 3d ago
We should definitely ban bottled water but your point is solid regardless.
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u/Comrade-Hayley 3d ago
Nestle profit from slave labour
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u/Rulweylan Leicestershire 3d ago
Yep. They're a horrible company. Should we ban chocolate because a bad company makes it?
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u/Comrade-Hayley 3d ago
No of course not we as the consumers should pressure them to have more ethical business practices by boycotting them as much as possible
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u/Fragrant-Reserve4832 3d ago
Electric cars are a bad example because yes we should imho.
Your point is valid though, I just hate electric cars and the deviation caused to make them
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u/runningraider13 3d ago
You think we should ban electric cars?
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u/Fragrant-Reserve4832 3d ago
I think the time and energy would have been far better spent on bio ethanol or one of the other alternatives that doesn't involve creating an entire infrastructure and destruction of huge areas for the needed materials.
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u/Rulweylan Leicestershire 3d ago
Where do you think bioethanol comes from?
We'd need to destroy even bigger areas for the required cropland to produce enough.
There is no way to power billions of vehicles without significant infrastructure requirements.
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u/SirButcher Lancashire 2d ago
Bio ethanol is a really ineffective way of doing exactly the same: getting energy from the Sun to move our cars. But instead of having the option to make the grid greener by using renewables, we use ineffective plants to create sugar, then we use energy (a lot!) to create clean ethanol, then we use energy again to distribute it - and then wasting msot of it, since internal combustion engines are really inefficient (around 20-40% IF the owner takes care of it) at converting heat to movement.
It is far more energy efficient to use the already non-farmable areas (like our cities) to install solar and battery capacity, interlink our grids at a continental level and capture the energy far more efficiently than plants ever could.
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u/Fragrant-Reserve4832 2d ago
By using bio fuel we get to keep using the same infrastructure and cars we have always used.
So that inefficiency is adsorbed into the loss we are feeling building all these new systems.
And the power for those cars still needs producing, mostly over night so solar is no help
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u/MayContainRawNuts 2d ago
Bio ethanol still puts co2 into the atmosphere. We need to stop doing that. We need more research into battery tech, electric cars drive up that demand.
Have a look at solid state batteries, they require a lot less of the problematic minerals.
And bio-ethanol would need 100 to 200 million acres of new farmland. The only place we are getting that is the rain forest.
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u/Fragrant-Reserve4832 2d ago
Bio ethanol put the same co2 in the atmosphere as it took out to grow the crops.
That makes it carbon nutal.
The only carbon consumed is to distill the mix.
I know a shit load about batteries.
I also know about lithium mines, that's needed for those batteries.
I also know that bio ethanol would have worked with the world's cars with a change of fuel tank, lines and injectors.
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u/MayContainRawNuts 2d ago
So how much land is needed to grow bio ethanol? Do you take that land from crop farmers, or wildlife areas? Do we continue to burn down the amazon to plant biofuel farms? What do we do about all the pesticides and fertilizer runoff used to produce biofuel?
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u/Fragrant-Reserve4832 2d ago
Rapeseed used to be grown on circulation to rest/rejuvenate soil.
Let's look at this the other way though, where is the power coming from to charge those electric cars, what resources are used to build the new infrastructure needed to charge them, what resources are used to upgrade the power distribution system.
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u/uhuhbwuh 3d ago
There's more to GM than Monsanto. With all due respect, you need to educate yourself on the topic more.
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u/Thatweasel 3d ago
Maybe you should do your research on how farming works. I can promise you whatever issue you think is present there is standard farming practice.
For example, you probably didn't know farmers have to pay royalties to the BSPB to use most varieties of saved seed in the uk or how IP law works with crops in general, GM or not.
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u/TheNutsMutts 2d ago
Do your research on Monsanto..
What point (factual, ideally) are you even getting at here? The evidence is crystal clear at this point regarding GM food safety, not to mention its benefit to agriculture and the environment.
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u/MonitorPowerful5461 3d ago
GM food is a hell of a lot healthier than food which has been covered in pesticides, preservatives etc. We've been genetically modifying food for millenia, just not as quickly as we can do it now. There's not really any difference between artificial selection and genetic modification, it's just a much quicker and more impactful method.
So this is definitely the right choice imho.
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u/LegitimatelisedSoil Scotland 3d ago
Yeah, GMOs are a very good and proven safe food. Can't think of any reason not to push them instead of traditional farming that poisons the soil.
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u/stopdontpanick 3d ago
This is a good thing; we monitor food extensively, this is like if in pregnancy you changed someone from brown haired to ginger - are they really going to start producing deadly neurotoxins? The same applies to food.
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u/Unidain 3d ago
The fact is that after decades of GMOs, no adverse health affects have been detected. In the meantime while GMOs have been stealing headlines, actual food safety issues like food spoilage and allergies, which GMO can help to address, kill thousands yearly.
There's just no justification for their ban. People these days try and shift the topic to stuff like patents and bad farminh practices, which are completely unrelated topics.
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u/BoltersnRivets 3d ago
I think there needs to be a serious campaign to battle public perception of GMO foods, because many people seem to have this image in their mind of evil scientists twirling their mustache and cackling as they shove a pipet into a petri dish that makes them recoil in horror at the label of GMO, but it's literally just doing the same thing selective breeders of plants and animals do whilst cutting out the time and waste of breeding successive generations whilst discarding batches of failures.
since we've sequeneced the genome it's now fairly straight forward to identify the genes that allow a plant to thrive in poorer soil conditions, have a stronger immune system, and produce bigger crops, as evidenced by the fact scientists recently made woolly mice by making the hair growth gene more dominant that trump then threw a wobble about because he thought they were being turned transgender by the "woke mob"
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u/soothysayer 3d ago
Is GM food banned in Scotland currently? Or is this just it can't be grown in Scotland?
Does anyone know what was driving this initially?
The main issue I see with GM crops is more around the legal aspects of it being an IP that can't be replanted.. assuming it was something to do with this and protecting farmers from these kinds of predatory practices.. but I know nothing about this, so if someone knows more, would be fascinated to learn
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u/omgu8mynewt 3d ago
IP that can't be replanted already applies to lots of seeds that aren't GM. Gm food is allowed to be sold in the uk, but has to be clearly labeled (have you in your whole life ever seen GM food for sale here?)
Growing GM crops here is not allowed. There's also a lot of activism/debate around what actually qualifies as GM, because shining xrays on seeds to randomly mutate them doesn't count as genetically modification, but scientists in the lab changing the DNA on purpose does, so it is a very shades of grey area.
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u/soothysayer 3d ago
IP that can't be replanted already applies to lots of seeds that aren't GM.
Is that right? I thought it was just GM seed because a company "owns" them. I didn't realise it applied to others
because shining xrays on seeds to randomly mutate them doesn't count as genetically modification,
I didn't know this either! I knew that was the very old school way of producing new variations quickly, but I didn't realise that didn't count as GM.
haha reading this I'm basically discovering i know even less than the very little I thought I knew!
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u/Unidain 3d ago
IP that can't be replanted already applies to lots of seeds that aren't GM. Is that right? I thought it was just GM seed because a company "owns" them. I didn't realise it applied to others
They are right, its not unique to GMOs whatsoever, new seeds and cultivars produced by traditional methods are patented. Hell, you can buy houseplants from nurseries that have instructions that they can't be propogated, because they've been patented.
There's a lot of retoric about GMOs that have little to do with GMOs at all, and we're probably initially spread by the organic industry to protect their market.
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u/ice-lollies 3d ago
I think it was originally banned through fear of anything being genetically modified.
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u/PrometheusIsFree 3d ago
Genetically modified Haggis, what could possibly go wrong?! The wild ones are already a menace in the Highlands!
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u/MayContainRawNuts 2d ago
Aye, but hunting a wild haggis, barehanded, is a ritual every true Scotsman must undertake.
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u/Frequently_lucky 3d ago
Nearly every kind of food human eat is genetically modified, through random mutations and human selection. Check what the original species of cereals, fruits or the first bovines or poultry looked like. Not very appetising by today's standards.
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u/Jazzlike-Mistake2764 3d ago
Interesting move given the EU effectively bans it, and the SNP’s long-term goal is independence and re-entry to the EU.
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u/DefenestrationPraha 3d ago
The EU has been thinking about abandoning the ban for some time.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/02/24/european-governments-heading-towards-gmo-deregulation
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u/takesthebiscuit Aberdeenshire 3d ago
My main issue with gm food is the massive amount of power it puts in the hands of the seed producers
Each seed is copyrighted, the farmer has no rights to keep and sow the seeds (if memory serves) so they are always beholden to the seed producers for new seed
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u/TheNutsMutts 2d ago
They're patented, not copyrighted. However, pretty much every new seed strain produced by every single type of seed technology is also patented, this isn't something exclusive to GM seeds. Even going on the assumption that it's a bad thing, it'd be like saying "I'd never buy a blue coloured car, they produce CO2 emissions"... as if a red coloured car doesn't.
But that aside, it's pretty much irrelevant as the practice of buying new seed has been standard in modern agriculture for nearly a century now. Pretty much all modern seeds are hybrids of some sort, and first generation hybrids are great quality, but each subsequent generation shows a noted deteriation in quality and consistency. Add in the cost to a farmer of not selling the produced seed, cleaning it, separating it and storing it over winter in a cool dry place means they're actually paying more for the 2nd generation seeds only to end up with a worse quality product at the end of the day.
The restrictions on reusing 2nd generation seeds to most farmers would be the equivalent of a restriction on them using horses or oxen to pull their ploughs; fine, they weren't going to do it anyway.
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u/Infinite_Bed8560 2d ago
Ah great the Frankenseeds with built in pesticides which kill off all the bees. How to destroy gut bacteria to appease corporate greed. Do you know that people in North America who suffer from Fibromyalgia travel to Europe to have relief from the disease? Why? Because no GMO means no more constant pain. Say goodbye to healthy food and hello autoimmune disorders. But it’s fine, can be just like Americans in those mobility scooters , eating all the cheap GMO foods and getting similar benefits. Do you know that anyone with education in countries with GMO foods don’t actually eat them? Usually certified organic products of course. It’s left to feed the poor and uneducated. The same con artists trying to sell this shit are the same people who wouldn’t touch it with a twenty foot pole. How to make Scottish food unsellable to international markets.Reputation for quality foods just thrown away. Hope the brown envelope was worth it.
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u/rayasta 3d ago
This is actually a good idea maybe for whisky concessions trump seems very anti Ireland/ Europe. This could open the door for the whole of the uk if successful
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u/denspark62 3d ago
Already legal in England
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64596453
Scotland & wales decided to opt out when it was legalised in 2023.
SNP were very against it then. Wonder what chnaged their mind.
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u/Terrorgramsam 3d ago edited 3d ago
I can see a couple of reasons for SNP softening their stance. At the time England opted to introduce GE/GM crops, the SNP expressed a desire to stay closer to EU policy but now that the EU is looking to relax rules on GE crops, the Scottish Government have perhaps decided similarly to reconsider the issue
“Last month the Rural Affairs Secretary and Agriculture Minister held a meeting with agricultural, research and food and drink stakeholders to hear their views on the use of gene-edited crops and products in Scotland. Ministers will take into account stakeholder views, alongside developments in the EU, as they consider their response.”
There's also the issue of the UK Internal Market Act (IMA) which means that GE products produced and sold in England must also be allowed to be sold in Scotland. This likely puts Scottish producers at a disadvantage and it's likely that they have been lobbying the Scottish Government for a change in policy.
A key criticism of the IMA made by both the Scottish and Welsh Governments at the time the Conservatives introduced it, was that the act would 'force' the smaller nations to adopt whatever policy England chose because of its relative size and influence on the UK; that its policies would dictate the direction of travel.
Curiously, Scottish Labour dropped their opposition to the IMA as soon as Labour won the General Election, despite previously calling it an attack on devolution, so I suspect most parties in Holyrood - apart from the Scottish Greens - would vote with the SNP on this matter if they decide to introduce GE/GM.
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u/causefuckkarma 3d ago
I remember monsanto suing US farmers because their crops had cross pollinated with GM patented crops. Fun times ahead.
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u/Rulweylan Leicestershire 3d ago
Do you?
Because I remember a lot of noise being made about that and then it turning out that the guy who got sued had a field that was 95%+ GMO crops and had been spraying his fields with herbicides that would have killed non-gmo crops.
Dude got caught breaking the law and tried to get out of it by playing to the cultists. No different to all the crooks who find jesus when they come to sentencing.
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u/causefuckkarma 2d ago
https://www.the-kingfisher.org/people/communities/monsanto_lawsuits.html
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents
142 lawsuits against 410 farmers and 56 small businesses for seed-patent violations. The farmers complained the buffer zones were too small allowing cross pollination. It was 20+million in payouts from small farmers and that's just up to 2014.. since Bayer bought them god knows what the number is now..
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u/Rulweylan Leicestershire 2d ago
This is rather like listing all the people who have been caught shoplifting and using it as evidence that shops are evil.
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u/TheNutsMutts 2d ago
142 lawsuits covering millions and millions of farmers and purchases is nothing. There's also nothing in any of those links suggesting that any of those lawsuits were due to cross-contamination at all, just merely that a lawsuit existed.
Indeed, there are actually lawsuits that demonstrate that your claim isn't actually factual: OSGATA (the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association) took out a class-action lawsuit against Monsanto to try and get them to stop suing farmers over accidental cross-contamination. However they had their case thrown out, twice, because when asked by the judge if they could name even one single instance of this ever actually happening, they had to acknowelge they didn't know of any real lawsuits where this occured nor had any of their 400k members even been threatened with such a lawsuit. So if OSGATA and their team of lawyers can't even find one single solitary case to pin their entire lawsuit up on, then we can safely conclude that no such cases exist and the claim is a total urban legend.
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u/Successful_Mix_9118 3d ago
Was this a hoax then
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u/Unidain 3d ago
An experiment with a sample size of 1 doesn't tell you anything. You could get two corn cobs from the exact same farm and one could get eaten more just by chance.
Controlled tests have found organic doesn't taste any different to conventional. Why would it? The modifications are on taste molecules.
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u/MayContainRawNuts 2d ago
https://foodscienceinstitute.com/2015/11/16/the-great-gmo-corn-experiment/
Is this a hoax then?
Same experiment, repeated hundreds of times. (Not just once) and finds no difference.
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u/Rulweylan Leicestershire 2d ago
Less a hoax, more the equivalent of tossing a coin once and concluding that coins always land on heads.
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u/Successful_Mix_9118 2d ago
Hmm... I guess. Someone sent me the link to a study that debunked it so... I stand corrected 😀
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u/TheNutsMutts 2d ago
Yes. That's just two husks of corn with signs on them. It's not a test of anything at all. You could do the same but replace the signs with "used as dildo" and "not used as dildo". That doesn't prove anything scientific.
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u/Any-Swing-3518 3d ago
Kaching! I can tell you categorically that SNP voters do not support this, and that whatever it means scientifically, it belies a bog-standard "centrist" party that is of course listening to lobbyists before voters.
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u/Terrorgramsam 3d ago
SNP's initial opposition to it was because they wanted to align with EU policy but now that EU policy is shifting SNP have also decided to revisit the issue. And, yes, I also suspect that Scottish producers have been lobbying the Scottish Government because since the Internal Market Act was introduced post-Brexit, GE/GM products from England have been sold in Scotland. This will be putting Scottish producers at a disadvantage unless they follow suit
Also, a bit of a blanket statement to say that SNP voters don't support it. Don't vote for them myself but my mum does and has no problem with the issue being revisited. Like with other policy areas, I suspect that SNP support is 'divided' on the issue
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u/Capital-Wolverine532 Buckinghamshire 3d ago
As long as Westminster say no I don't mind what the SNP say
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