President Donald Trump is working to streamline the regulatory maze for agricultural biotechnology — he signed an executive order directing federal agencies to streamline the agricultural biotechnology regulatory processes.
Modernizing the Regulatory Framework for Agricultural Biotechnology Products Executive Order will help eliminate delays, reduce developer costs, and provide greater certainty about the review process for farmers. Biotechnology has been used in farming for decades to produce safer, more sustainable crops. Streamlining the regulatory process will help create an environment that fosters greater investment in these innovative crops. The current regulatory process is a regulatory maze that can take over a decade to navigate, delaying innovations that can bring safe resilient crops to the market. An average of five petitions were processed by USDA each year from 1993 through 2017.
The Executive Order states, “Recent advances in biotechnology have the potential to revolutionize agriculture and thereby enhance rural prosperity and improve the quality of American lives. Biotechnology can help the Nation meet its food production needs, raise the productivity of the American farmer, improve crop and animal characteristics, increase the nutritional value of crop and animal products, and enhance food safety. In order to realize these potential benefits, however, the United States must employ a science-based regulatory system that evaluates products based on human health and safety and potential benefits and risks to the environment.”
