The three federal regulators of biotechnology, the USDA, EPA and FDA, were ordered by President Trump on Tuesday to modernize their handling of agricultural biotechnology, both to assure U.S. preeminence in the field and a safe food supply for a growing population. Referring to gene-edited crops and animals, the executive order calls on the agencies to use their existing powers “to exempt low-risk products of agriculture biotechnology from undue regulation.”
The Biotechnology Innovation Organization called the executive order an “important step forward to ensure government policy does not hinder 21st Century biotechnology from addressing the many global challenges – from a looming food crisis to climate change – facing society today.” The biotech industry says gene editing is a safe and speedier way to produce plants with traits that could have been developed by traditional breeding techniques.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said current federal regulations, which date from the early days of genetic modification, are an impediment to innovation. “If we do not put these safe biotechnology advances to work here are home, our competitors in other nations will.” An overhaul of federal biotech regulations began in the closing years of the Obama era.
Perdue announced last year that USDA would not regulate plants developed with techniques such as gene editing unless they pose a pest or noxious weed threat. At present, the USDA regulates only crops and other plants developed through classical biotechnology, which involves insertion of genetic material from a foreign organism into the genes of a plant.
Last week, the USDA presented for public comment a proposed rule to exempt many genetically engineered plants from regulation as long as the modifications are similar to those achieved by traditional breeding and do not pose a plant-pest risk.
To read the executive order on regulation of agricultural biotechnology, click here.