Fatbergs turned into perfume: Britain’s new industrial revolution
A further barrier for the field is its regulation by government, especially for applications for producing novel foods, according to Will Milligan CEO of Extracellular, which provides products to firms making lab-grown meat.
“Singapore, on the other hand, has a very clear framework for the approval process in bringing products to market, and the recommended timelines are about half what they are in the UK.”
In response to criticisms, the government has set up a body to cut through the red tape, the Regulatory Innovation Office.
But “streamlining does mean deregulation, in many circumstances”, argues Dr Helen Wallace, director of the campaign group Gene Watch. She worries that the risks of engineering biology are being overlooked by the government in its enthusiasm to reap the claimed benefits.
Many applications of the technology involve creating entirely new organisms which are contained inside large vats in the production process. Even if they were to escape, they are unlikely to survive as they have been engineered to thrive in the very specific, artificial conditions they were designed for.
But Dr Wallace is concerned about some applications that are designed to be released into the environment. “There is one in the US which is made to survive and reproduce in the soil to boost nitrogen levels, which is very worrying because even very small changes in their DNA could make them more harmful to people, animals and plants.
“This could create a new kind of living pollution that could spread in rivers, the sea, the air, in rain and you would not be able to reverse any adverse consequences”.
