Qi Biodesign receives support from the PRC, a committee said
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
Members of a House committee want answers from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack about how the USDA operated in providing a review to a seed company that receives support from the Chinese government.
Qi Biodesign, founded by Kevin Zhao, who completed his Ph.D. in chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University and the Broad Institute, specializes in gene editing and is backed by CAS Star, a venture capital firm related to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The website Pitchook, an online resource for global capital market data, lists CAS Star as a minority investor in Qi Biodesign.
The House Select Committee on the Chinese Community Party, which works on a bipartisan basis to identify potential Chinese threats and plans to defend from them, wants to know how Qi Biodesign received regulatory approval for a soybean in only days.
On April 25, Qi Biodesign submitted a request for a review related to a soybean with increased oleic acid and a decrease in linoelic acid.
This is achieved through “loss of function of FAD2 alleles preferentially expressed in seeds,” the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s (APHIS) regulatory stats review table says.
On May 29, APHIS provided its response.
“APHIS did not identify any plausible pathway by which your modified soybean would pose an increased plant pest risk relative to comparator soybean plants,” Bernadette Juarez, deputy administrator of APHIS wrote in the ruling, “APHIS has determined your soybean is unlikely to pose an increased plant pest risk relative to its comparators.”
This quick turnaround indicates the USDA “facilitated Qi Biodesign’s regulatory status review in a matter of weeks, raising questions about the level of due diligence and motivation behind the rapid review,” the committee wrote to Secretary Vilsack on July 10.
The committee is concerned that USDA is approving Chinese-backed ag biotechnology “without concern for U.S. supply chains or trade negotiations” and this clearance “undermines years of hard-nosed U.S. trade demands and could make U.S. farmers complicit in the PRC’s desire to replace them.”
The House committee is asking Vilsack and the USDA to revisit the regulatory review and provide a briefing outlining multiple items.
This includes what steps USDA took to protect supply chains from foreign adversaries and the complete timeline of USDA’s review of Qi Biodesign products.
And the committee wants the report no later than Aug.1.