Page 44 - Breeding Edge ebook

“When you’re mostly trying to eliminate a pest population, why not just let one agency do it?”
says Jaydee Hanson, senior policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety, who pushed for the
change.

Everyone in the biotech realm – including government officials, private industry, non-governmental
organizations and plant breeders – agrees that clear lines of responsibility are essential. The recent
report from the Trump administration’s Rural Prosperity Task Force calls on the administration
to “develop a streamlined, science-based regulatory policy” that ensures products are assessed “in
a risk-based manner, providing predictable pathways for commercialization.”

“We’re hopeful that perhaps that’s
kind of the hook that USDA will start
taking some leadership in getting other
agencies to move in a similar
direction… and with some leadership
from the White House as well,” says
Clint Nesbitt, director of regulatory
affairs for food and agriculture at the
Biotechnology Innovation
Organization (BIO).

President Trump signed the executive order creating the Rural “It is important that you have a
Prosperity Task Force on Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue's first day on
the job. regulatory system that does give

consumers the reassurance that

these products have had the

appropriate amount of regulatory
oversight,” Nesbitt says. “That
doesn’t mean that every single thing
necessarily needs one-by-one review.”

But every sensible recommendation comes with a caveat. In order to fashion a coordinated approach,
there must be people in place to do the coordinating. And the Trump administration has been slow to get
its political appointees in place.

The Rural Prosperity report, for example, recommends that the White House Office of Science

and Technology Policy coordinate interagency biotechnology efforts. In addition, the report
recommends the administration “create a forum led by (OSTP) that connects regulators with the

funding and R&D agencies to increase awareness and speed the safe commercialization of novel
biotechnology products.”

Building on the task force report, USDA and FDA announced a joint agreement Jan. 30 that pledges to
carry out a 2015 strategy, spearheaded by OSTP under the Obama administration, for modernizing the
government’s regulatory process for biotechnology.

Just one problem: OSTP still doesn’t have a director, more than a year after President Trump took
office. It’s the longest stretch the position has been vacant since OSTP was established in 1976.

Nesbitt says that BIO hasn’t yet had detailed discussions with agency regulators about biotech, citing in
part the dearth of officials in positions of responsibility.

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