Beyond GM v Secretary of State: High Court quashes precision breeding regulations over labelling powers error

The High Court has handed a significant victory to organic farming and consumer groups in a challenge to England's new regulatory framework for precision bred organisms (PBOs), finding that the Secretary of State acted irrationally when making the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Regulations 2025.

In a judgement handed down on 4 June 2026, Mr Justice Johnson granted permission and allowed the claim on the irrationality ground, holding that the Minister had been materially and repeatedly misadvised that the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 contained no power to mandate the labelling of PBO food and feed. That advice was wrong. Sections 26(1) and 26(2)(b) of the Act plainly confer such a power, a point that was ultimately common ground between the parties.

The claimants, comprising campaign group Beyond GM, two organic farmers and an investigative food journalist, argued that the absence of mandatory labelling under the 2025 Regulations made it materially more difficult for the organic sector to exclude PBOs from supply chains, and for consumers to make informed purchasing decisions. The 2025 Regulations came into force on 13 November 2025, establishing a lighter-touch regime that exempts PBOs from the GMO regulatory framework applicable in the rest of the United Kingdom and the European Union.

The court found that ministerial submissions as early as August 2024 wrongly stated that labelling powers had not been included in the Act, and that this error was never explicitly corrected in the documentary record. A briefing prepared for a meeting with Beyond GM in October 2024 repeated the same error, as did a departmental paper of 1 November 2024 and a ministerial letter of 25 November 2024. The Secretary of State accepted that the earlier briefings misstated the legal position.

The defendant sought to rely on the record of a meeting on 31 October 2024 as evidence that the Minister had by then correctly understood his powers. Mr Justice Johnson rejected that argument on a careful reading of the meeting notes, observing that the discussion was focused almost exclusively on seed labelling under the Plant Varieties and Seeds Act 1964 rather than on the broader power to mandate labelling of all PBOs placed on the market under the 2023 Act. No witness statement from anyone present at the meeting was produced.

The judgement holds that the Minister's decision-making was "materially constrained" by the misapprehension as to the scope of his powers. Had he understood that mandatory labelling of all PBOs was within his gift, there was at least a real possibility that he would have considered a materially different range of options and directed further enquiries accordingly. It was therefore not highly likely that the outcome would have been substantially the same.

Three further grounds of challenge failed. The court refused permission on the human rights ground, holding that the additional burden of maintaining organic certification, though real and financially significant, did not attain the threshold of severity required to engage article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights or article 1 of the First Protocol. The claimants had not shown that the Regulations would deprive them of their organic certification or the goodwill of their businesses.

On the Habitats Regulations ground, the court held that the 2025 Regulations did not constitute a "plan or project" within the meaning of regulation 63, as they lacked any sufficiently tangible nexus with particular European sites and were too high-level and general to permit meaningful site-specific assessment. Permission was also refused on the fourth ground, the court finding regulation 30(4)(b) plainly within the scope of the Secretary of State's regulation-making powers and consistent with the underlying scientific advice that PBOs present no greater risk than traditionally bred organisms.

The question of remedy was not immediately resolved. Both parties agreed that further submissions should be made in the light of the judgement, and the court has invited those submissions accordingly.

Beyond GM & Ors v Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs [2026] EWHC 1306 (Admin)