On Tuesday, October 17th, a bipartisan group of 79 Members of Congress sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, urging agencies responsible for regulating biotechnology to coordinate and advance policies and strategies that promote innovation in agriculture, domestically and internationally, through the President’s Interagency Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity.
“We urge you to coordinate with each other and stakeholders to improve these regulatory proposals in ways that are consistent and foster innovations,” the letter reads.
USDA, FDA, and EPA are in the process of reviewing the regulatory system for/how their agencies regulate biotechnology.
ASA President and Roseville, Illinois farmer Ron Moore applauded the letter saying, “Soybean producers rely on agriculture innovations like biotechnology to help grow a safe, affordable, and abundant food supply. We need consistent regulatory policies based on sound-science that promote new technologies in agriculture that also help put less strain on our natural resources.”
The letter, led by Congressmen Neal Dunn, M.D. (FL-02) and Jimmy Panetta (CA-20) urges a “consistent, science-based, risk-proportionate regulatory system” for agricultural biotechnology.