That’s BIO President and CEO Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath’s message in an op-ed published in Newsweek ahead of a week of consequential climate and food resiliency discussions.
World leaders are gathering in New York this week for the UN General Assembly,where discussions will focus on climate and specifically the resiliency of our food systems.
“Advances in biotechnology, especially within the agricultural sector, can help us overcome the immense, interconnected challenges of climate change and global hunger,”wrote BIO’s Dr. Michelle in Newsweek. “Emerging biotechnology, such as gene-editing, can safely and effectively change our planet's future for the better.”
Read: Why gene editing should be on the menu
“But merely having invented the technology is not enough,” she continues. “We also need to make sure the products of groundbreaking biotech are accessible around the world.”
“At the moment, they're not—in large part, due to trade barriers imposed not by adversaries, but by some of our closest trading partners”—Mexico, which is “blocking the regulatory approval and imports of biotech crops,” she explains.
Read: Unpacking Mexico’s economic and environmental paradox
The bottom line: “America's trade officials need to hold their Mexican counterparts to account—and specifically, persuade our southern neighbor to resume the approval process for agricultural biotechnology and roll back its directive to bar biotech corn,” she concludes. “Failure would squander one of our best chances for a healthier, more sustainable tomorrow.”
Read the whole thing.
Read more about biotech solutions for climate.
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