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The basic tenets of government regulation are that similar things should be regulated similarly, and the degree of oversight should be proportionate to the risk of the product or activity. For new varieties of plants, risk is a function of certain characteristics of the parental plant. . . and the introduced gene or genes.
In other words, it is not the source or the method used to introduce a gene but its function that determines how it contributes to risk. Under USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), however, plants made with the newest, most precise techniques have been subjected to more extensive and burdensome regulation, independent of the risk of the product. . . .
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With this record of extensive adoption and use, one might have thought that APHIS would reduce its regulatory burdens on genetically engineered crops, but there has been no hint of that. APHIS continues to push the costs for regulatory compliance into the stratosphere while its reviews of benign new crops become ever more dilatory: Evaluations that took an average of six months in the 1990′s now take three-plus years. . . .
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Product approvals are trickling out from U.S. regulatory agencies, but incompetent, dilatory and at times corrupt regulation has damaged or even eliminated entire once-promising sectors of genetic engineering. . . .
As the past seven years have illustrated, unnecessary, excessive, inefficient regulation stifles innovation and slows economic growth.
Read full, original post: Excessive, Wrong-Headed Regulation Of ‘GMOs’ Stifles Innovation And Slows Economic Growth
