Mr. Pat Farrell:

The Senator is right. It has moved out; in a past life, I would have. It is not about genetically modified organisms, GMOs. There is a move within the EU that CRISPR technology is considered in a different area because you do not introduce new genomic into a product; you just slightly alter the genetics. I am not completely au faitin fruit but the Senator is 100% right. It comes into dealing with climate change. By using CRISPR technology, it means that a product might be genetically changed so that it can be immune to certain pests and disease.

As to whether it has a huge area in fruit, I am not sure about cropping, but the Senator is 100% correct. It is a way of reducing the need to use chemical products and so on. We would be fully behind the idea of any new technologies like that. It is very welcome that, at an EU level, that has been acknowledged that in the past year. If we did not have some of these technologies, we would not have had a Covid vaccine as quickly as we did. The same applies to food security, increasing our sustainability credentials and so on.