Download PDF
November 25, 2015

Diverse Parties Say Federal Biotech Rules Confusing

The ACTA Group

The November 25, 2015, Bloomberg BNA Daily Environment Report quoted Bergeson & Campbell, P.C., in the article “Diverse Parties Say Federal Biotech Rules Confusing.”

Bergeson & Campbell PC, a law firm that represents companies working with emerging technologies, supported the efforts to update the framework but described structural problems that may thwart the White House’s intentions.

The regulatory infrastructure is ill-suited to address synthetic biology—a new form of genetic engineering—nimbly or comprehensibly, the law firm wrote.

Some synbio products aren’t regulated at all, it wrote.

Exacerbating the problem, it said, are the “extreme and growing shortages in government staff and funding.”

Bergeson and Campbell pointed to a report it coauthored recently with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ Synthetic Biology Project as providing insight into fundamental problems federal agencies are facing.