One of the study's authors, Richard Murray, a professor of control and dynamical systems and bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology, said the single-point concept will be critical, along with expanded investments by federal agencies on the biotech front.

"A single point of entry might enable federal agencies to decide early in the product development cycle which [regulatory] authorities are relevant," he said during a webinar announcing the study results.

Currently, the existing regulatory system for biotechnology is "complex and fragmented, resulting in a system that can be difficult for individuals, nontraditional organizations, and small- and medium-size enterprises to navigate," the report stated.

As a result, it might cause "uncertainty and a lack of predictability" for developers of future biotechnology products, and could lead to "potential for loss of public confidence" in regulation of future biotechnology products.

The authors also fretted about staffing levels, expertise and resources available in federal agencies relevant to future biotechnology, and said they "may not be sufficient to handle the expected scope and scale of future" biotech products.

REGULATION RECOMMENDATIONS

The committee offered three main recommendations regarding biotechnology regulation.

First, it recommended that federal regulatory agencies ramp up scientific capabilities, tools and expertise in key areas of expected biotechnology growth, including natural, regulatory and social sciences.

Second, the committee called for increased investments in internal and external research by federal agencies, as well as their use of pilot projects that would improve their own ecological risk assessments and benefits analyses of future biotech products.

"The National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and other agencies that fund biotechnology research that has the potential to lead to new biotechnology products should increase their investments in regulatory science and link research and education activities to regulatory science activities," the authors concluded.

So far, very few of the biotechnology techniques mentioned in the report have hit the market. However, last year, USDA set a precedent on one such technique -- gene editing -- by announcing that it would not regulate a Pioneer corn hybrid produced by CRISPR-Cas9.

The agency's decision hinged on the fact that no new genetic material from a separate organism was inserted into the plant genome, such as happens in older biotech products, such as Bt corn hybrids.

This announcement raised broader questions about how federal agencies including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration should foster what is expected to be a biotechnology explosion in the next decade -- questions this NAS report has aimed to answer.

Read the full report here: http://bit.ly/…

Todd Neeley can be reached at todd.neeley@dtn.com

Follow him on Twitter @toddneeleyDTN

(EU/AG)

© Copyright 2017 DTN/The Progressive Farmer. All rights reserved.