FDA’s tough new task: Explain biotech’s safety, benefits

The Food and Drug Administration has a tough job ahead of it, a job that the food and agriculture sectors have struggled to accomplish: Convince the public that biotech crops are safe to eat and can offer a variety of benefits to the public and the environment. The fiscal 2017 spending bill enacted at the end of April includes $3 million earmarked for FDA to coordinate with the Agriculture Department on a consumer outreach and education effort. The stated goal under the legislation is to educate consumers “on the environmental, nutritional, food safety, economic, and humanitarian impacts of such biotechnology, food products, and feed.”The GMO law enacted in July 2016 will require companies to disclose the presence of biotech ingredients through a digital code that can be read by smartphones. But consumers still won’t have enough knowledge about biotechnology itself, and that is where the FDA program will come in, said Brian Rell, a spokesman for House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Robert Aderholt, an Alabama Republican who originally put the provision in the House version of the FY17 bill.“Up until now, consumer activists, biotech seed companies, and organic companies have tried to fill the void in trying to educate the public. However, each of these segments has an ulterior motive. FDA is a neutral source and the public generally accepts FDA’s word on most scientific issues,” Rell said.