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State ag group, bioengineers critical of FDA regulations on gene editing

The policy expert that leads the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture is critical of the federal government’s regulation of livestock gene editing. Dr. Barbara Glenn says, “Clearly for livestock and poultry, the current regulatory path is broken. It’s not risk-based. It’s not getting the animals and the animal products to market. The chilling effect on R & D (research and development) is severely inhibiting the emergence of these animals.”

Glenn told the USDA’s Ag Outlook Forum that if U.S. farmers had access to gene-edited animals, they could enhance profitability and keep up with the global market.  She says regulations need to focus on the product and not the process.

Mitch Abrahamson with Recombinetics agrees. He says, “We are regulated as a drug with our food animal products, and this is really an unclear and inhibitory process to bring these products to market.”

Abrahamson says they are focused on naturally-occurring animal genes from around the world to resist disease and heat stress. “We can achieve this through traditional breeding programs, but they take 20, 30, 40, 50 generations to accomplish that. We can do this in a single generation.”

He told the Ag Outlook Forum bioengineering isn’t a technology looking for a problem, it’s bringing the right technology to address the problems consumers and genetics companies are already challenged with.

The other participants on the USDA panel were Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts and Jack Bobo from Intrexon.

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