Officials at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA; Washington, DC) are poised to reconsolidate biotechnology-related regulatory activities and programs, bringing them more or less to where they were five years ago. However, amid lingering uncertainty over recent sweeping proposals from President George Bush (Nat. Biotechnol. 20, 643, 2002) that, at least initially, sought to move the entire Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services (APHIS) into the wholly new Department of Homeland Security, USDA officials refused in July to comment publicly on an otherwise tame, seemingly well-grounded set of administrative proposals for regulating biotechnology outlined in a widely circulated memorandum from APHIS administrator Bobby Acord.
In that mid-June memorandum, Acord notified APHIS staff that he was establishing a new entity, called the Biotechnology Regulatory Services (BRS), within this USDA agency. A major purpose of forming BRS, he explained, is “to consolidate the loose collection of biotechnology activities ... in APHIS ... [to] bring the necessary focus to regulatory capacity building, domestic and international policy coordination and development, risk assessments, permitting, and compliance.” Acord also is planning to assign Cindy Smith, an associate deputy administrator for wildlife services within the USDA, to serve as the acting deputy administrator of BRS before a search for someone to fill that post begins.
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