What should the Farm Bill include?

With the Farm Bill up for reauthorization this year, a food, agriculture, and biotech industry coalition (including BIO) released policy recommendations. Plus, we look at what’s happening with the biosimilars market in 2023. (579 words, 2 minutes, 53 seconds)

What should the 2023 Farm Bill include?

With the Farm Bill expiring this year, the Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance (FACA), which includes BIO, released its 2023 Farm Bill recommendations yesterday.

What’s happening: The Farm Bill is up for renewal this year, and hearings are ongoing in the Senate and House. BIO and the 80+ FACA partners call for “climate-smart” policy in the 2023 Farm Bill, which will shape farm and forest policy for five years and beyond.

Here’s what we’re calling for:

Innovation:

• Establish a federal definition for biostimulants and a predictable, science- and risk-based framework for their assessment.
• Support a robust science- and risk-based regulatory process for animal and plant biotech facilitating sustainable food production.
• Support for plant breeding innovation aimed at climate solutions.
• Emphasize climate-smart inputs and processes, including biotech.
• Reauthorize the Research Facilities Act (RFA).

Livestock:

• Direct USDA to streamline animal biotech approval.
• Enable technologies such as gene editing to improve animal genetics to increase production per animal/reduce herd size and help animals adapt to changing weather.
• Ensure USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service incorporates feed/nutrition management to reduce emissions and includes products that inhibit enteric methane.

Food Waste:

• Streamline regulatory approval for crops developed using modern plant breeding technologies.
• Support biotechnology to enhance the efficiency and efficacy of agriculture through improvements in genetics.

Forestry:

• Reduce barriers to participation in voluntary, high-quality forest carbon markets.
• Invest in research on carbon sequestration and emissions reduction.

Click to watch the highlights from FACA’s press conference.

More Reading: How to feed nine billion people with cutting-edge technology

Biosimilars expected to boom in 2023-27, says report

The market for biosimilars, which mimic novel biologics, is set to expand this year, says a new IQVIA report. 

What’s happening: Since 2007, 30 biosimilars based on 12 biologic molecules have been launched in the U.S., and ten more are set to launch this year, says a recent report from life sciences data analytics provider IQVIA. For 2023-2027, cumulative sales of $129 billion in biosimilars are projected.

How we got here: Accelerated by the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009, which limits guaranteed exclusivity of large-molecule biologics to 12 years, lower-cost biosimilars lead to higher use of the molecule they mimic, typically achieving more than 60% of the molecule’s sales volume within three years, the report says.

More biologics to face competition: 14% of the $260 billion biologics market faces biosimilar competition already, IQVIA reports.

Biosimilars increase patient use: “Non-340B clinics have seen higher uptake of biosimilars than 340B clinics, likely due to reimbursement dynamics,” says IQVIA. However, development of innovative alternatives to a molecule decreases sales.

Overall market impact: “With biosimilars seeing increasing acceptance in the U.S. and the scale of spending on medicines facing upcoming biosimilar competition growing, the impact on all stakeholders will be significant,” the report finds. 

Read the report.

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Reuters: CDC panel recommends Bavarian Nordic’s mpox vaccine for all adults at risk
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President Biden’s Thursday: No official events scheduled the day after a poll shows Democrats now favor him as a 2024 presidential candidate. 

What’s Happening on Capitol Hill: Quiet day.