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U.S. Pork Calls for Level Playing Field Over FDA Rules
USAgNet - 07/16/2018

Already bearing the brunt of global trade retaliation against American agriculture, U.S. pork producers now face additional headwinds in the form of a regulatory land grab by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) Friday called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to assert its proper oversight of two emerging issues critical to the future of animal agriculture: laboratory-produced cultured protein and gene editing in livestock production.

Alternative proteins include those that are plant-based as well as cultured products grown in a lab. The FDA today hosts a public hearing to address regulatory oversight of cultured products that are engineered in a lab to look, smell and taste like real meat. While the viability, production practices and environmental impact of these products are shrouded in secrecy, the misleading marketing plans of the companies producing such products are clear, with animal imagery and terms such as "clean meat" and "prime beef" used in their packaging prototypes.

NPPC urges the Trump administration to establish a level playing field by establishing regulatory authority over laboratory-produced cultured protein products with the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, where they will be required to comply with the same regulatory standards, including continuous inspection, process controls, antemortem and postmortem inspection of source animals and other requirements, as conventionally produced red meat and poultry products.

Despite the lack of any statutory requirement, the FDA currently holds regulatory authority over gene editing in food producing animals. As a result, an animal health breakthrough that will dramatically enhance animal care and food safety and support economic prosperity in rural America faces an impractical, lengthy and expensive approval process that will render it unavailable to American farmers while countries around the world realize its potential.

FDA oversight will treat any gene edited animal as a living animal drug - and every farm raising them a drug manufacturing facility - undermining U.S. agricultural competitiveness relative to other countries with more progressive gene editing regulatory policies.


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