Top Environmental Official Tours Mycogen, Hears Plea on Rules

Mycogen Chairman Jerry Caulder Monday gave U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William Reilly a tour of the San Diego-based biotechnology company’s facilities--and used the occasion to lobby Reilly on regulatory revisions that would speed more bioengineered agricultural products into the marketplace.

During the tour, Reilly told Mycogen employees that his agency supports the development of biological alternatives to chemical pesticides. But the federal agency also has an obligation to maintain “rigorous controls” that will safeguard the public, Reilly said.

Reilly toured Mycogen’s research and development plant to bolster his understanding of the processes that lead to new biopesticides and genetically engineered plants. Reilly’s agency is playing a key role in the development of regulations that probably will be introduced before the year ends.

Caulder and other biotech executives are pressing the Bush Administration to make good on a campaign pledge to dramatically reduce regulations governing the development and sale of biopesticides and genetically engineered plants.

Biotech critics maintain that genetically engineered products are so new and different that they will require strict regulation to ensure public safety. They say that the Bush Administration is attempting to bypass the regulatory process in a bid to stimulate the rapidly growing biotech industry.

Biotech industry leaders want regulators to “regulate the product, not the process,” said Richard Godown, president of the Industrial Biotechnology Assn., a Washington, D.C.-based trade group.

“We say that genetically engineered technology should not immediately give rise to a new set of regulations,” Godown said Monday during a telephone interview. “We should regulate biopesticides the same way we regulate regular pesticides.”

Reilly said the U.S. regulatory system shouldn’t needlessly retard the development and introduction of new products. To that end, the EPA is developing an “incentives program” that will help spur development of “technologies that are environmentally benign . . . that do not create pesticide residue,” Reilly said.

Caulder said the existing federal regulatory framework can lead to needless duplication of agency reviews because the EPA shares its role with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food & Drug Administration.