WASHINGTON — The Trump administration came remarkably close to shoring up the scattershot way the United States regulates the “bioeconomy” — a wide-ranging category of products like lab grown meat, biofuels, DNA storage drives, and CAR-T cancer drugs — but fell short. Now, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is within striking distance of the same.
An executive order drafted by Trump’s team and obtained by STAT reveals the previous White House’s strategy. The order, which was shelved amid the coronavirus pandemic according to one Trump administration source who worked on the document, would have directed the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Security Council to chair an “interagency committee” that would create a national bioeconomy strategy within 210 days.
That’s something the biotech sector has been clamoring for for months — and something it’s hoping the Biden administration will take up, too. A National Academy of Sciences panel recently recommended something similar.
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