Case study: Professor Tom Richards
Professor Tom Richards discusses his experience of a secondment with the Food Standards Agency Policy Team as they work through implementation of the 2023 Precision Breeding act.
My research focuses on trying to understand how genome content underpins the evolution of cellular complexity. I try to understand how complex life such as plants and animals evolved. This has limited applications to agriculture or food policy, but my research does seek to understand how the exchange of genetic material between distantly related organism impacted how life evolved. As part of this work, we also use genetic technologies to explore how gain of genes can change cellular functions. This work skirts alongside the often-thorny issue of how we humans should use genetic technologies for industry, agriculture and medicine. Excited by the opportunity to witness policy implementation enabled by new science, and potentially enabling of new science, I was thrilled to join the Food Standards Agency Policy Team as they work on enacting new policy.
Background
Turbo charged by the discovery and utilisation of CRISPR technologies, a wealth of opportunities to edit and manipulate genomes of agricultural species has emerged. With increasing pressure on farming land and growing reliance on ecologically expensive agricultural practices; such technologies could offer a partial solution to many problems emerging from humanity’s relationship with food supply and our natural environment. As the UK diverged away from EU policy, variance in the control and the use of genetic technologies in agricultural food production became an objective of the previous government. On the 23rd of March 2023 the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act received Royal Assent.
My role as a secondee
My work at the FSA started prior to reading of the 2023 act and stretched through to the initial development of secondary legislation (how would this policy be implemented and managed). This was about two years in total, usually one afternoon a week but sometimes a full week was needed. The policy team was composed of around 12 people. All of this team had a huge portfolio of responsibilities, the Precision Breeding act was one of their many jobs, and so the team often changed as responsibilities of the individuals changed. The team was also resident all over the UK, so we met online regularly and met in person every couple of months. They are/were a hugely impressive team of people, knowledgeable, understanding and supportive of each other and luckily me. They were driven to progress a task which was hugely complex. The detailed end of policy implementation is, well, detailed. My role was to attend meetings, to comment on scientific perspectives, review reports and policy proposals from a scientific perspective, engage with stakeholders, represent the FSA at some discussion meetings (largely in the scientific sphere), and write briefs for example explaining how certain genetictechnologies work. Sometimes these writing tasks were from a wider field, for example how would industrially cultivated meat align the FSA’s approval policies.
My experience as a policy associate
I loved being part of an engaged and positive team working on a specific objective, even though the objectives sometimes shifted as policy decisions were made elsewhere. It was a very different experience from running a research laboratory or being in charge of a teaching unit. At times I felt out of my depth, this was the first time since graduate training somebody had told me to write something in a different way. This world communicates differently than I have experienced in science. This difference is present in both content and approach; the role was not about my opinion or views but about sharing my scientific knowledge.
There were real highlights, including listening to parliamentary debates online while in parallel discussing with colleagues the implications of the comments. Elsewhere sitting on a House of Lords panel for a drop-in question session was also exciting (I didn’t get any questions). I would highly recommend the experience for two reasons: i) you get to see and contribute to science working with policy, which is exactly what the policy secondment is set up to do, and ii) you get to be part of something totally different, operating in a team that is largely alien to the life of an academic. This second bonus was not advertised but for me very valuable.
A note of reflection
One of things that made my experience so rewarding was I believe in this work, not specifically driven by a perspective that we must use genetic engineering. Genetic engineering may make a difference, but to do so it needs to be regulated appropriately, an imbalance in either direction, and the wheels will come off this endeavour. Over-regulation and the technologies will only be accessible to a handful of users with very specific commercial aims, under-regulation and we run the risk that society and markets will not gain confidence in this technology. The FSA and other government departments understood this balancing act and put a mighty sum of effort into implementing this policy.