The Regulatory Process For New Crop Protection Products

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

There’s a lot of great innovation happening that will lead to some great products for farmers to use. But it can be frustrating how long it takes for these products to hit the market. Micropep recently announced they had submitted their peptide-based biofungicide for approval in Brazil and Paraguay, with plans to do the same in the US. But vice president of regulatory affairs Kevin Leiner says it’s still a long process to get that approval.

Leiner… “ The sheer volume of studies and data that you have to generate, you have to very well characterize what the product is. You have to understand what happens to it when you apply it in the environment, so the product can break down, be metabolized. Does it metabolize into products that are more or less toxic or differently toxic? What happens to human consumers? So all of these studies have to be conducted to gather information and then to conclude whether or not your use pattern will be safe. Because ultimately, everything is toxic at the end of the day, it's a matter of how much you're exposed to. So as long as those exposures are below a level at which harm could occur, it's safe, and that's what we have to establish with the regulatory agencies.”

Leiner did say once the product is approved, the process is much more streamlined to add additional crops to that approval.