USDA to Enable GMO Approval

USDA Plans to Outsource Biotech Studies

by Mateusz Perkowski

The USDA plans to experiment with a new way of evaluating biotech crops for potential commercialization. Under the agency's new two-year pilot project, biotech developers would conduct their own environmental assessment of transgenic crops or pay contractors to perform the analysis. Currently, officials at USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service are responsible for the studies.

Federal environmental law requires the agency to complete such reviews before deregulating biotech crops.

The goal of the new pilot program is to make the process more timely and efficient, according to APHIS. The approach has met with support from the biotech industry, which wants to reduce delays in the approval of transgenic crops. Critics of genetic engineering, on the other hand, worry the program will result in biased and inaccurate environmental reviews.

~Mateusz Perkowski is an agricultural reporter at Capital Press Agriculture Weekly, Salem, Oregon.