Bio 15

Cumbers:  Welcome to everybody. Antony, let’s start with you. Is what you’re doing regulated?  And has the policy around biotechnology helped or hindered you in your startup? Evans: There’s a relatively broad range of things that we’re doing. Everything in biotechnology is regulated to some degree. I think you need to be very careful separating the product regulation and the process regulation. And by that I mean the regulation of which the end product which you sell to people is covered, versus the process by which you make that product, which is a very separate process. And actually that’s sort of where more of the FBI issues pop up. So we have a broad set of regulations that fit over what we’re doing. There’s all kinds of regulations around ordering DNA, making sure that those sequences are appropriate, who can do it. You know if you want to order reagents, you have to go through certain processes. There’s a set of regulations around that, the lab, all of that. But the most important for us is the product regulations. We have a couple of areas that we touch into. The first is our genetically-modified plant and the plant’s seeds that we are sending out. We have recently received determination from APHIS (Animal Plant Health Inspection Service) that that product will not be regulated by them. You: So what is APHIS? Evans: APHIS is the USDA’s biotechnology regulatory arm. So they’re responsible for regulating all genetically modified things that fall under USDA’s regulatory permits, which predominantly...