Young: Biotech offers opportunities, and America must lead

By Senator Todd Young

When you hear “biotech,” you might think about medicine on a bathroom counter.

Biotech is that, but also so much more. It touches every critical sector that Americans rely on, including our food supply.

Emerging biotechnologies — from agricultural advances to defense applications to novel therapeutics — have the capability to reshape our economy. Biotech offers tremendous opportunities to strengthen America’s food security and agriculture innovation, both of which are critical to our national security.

If the United States does not lead in this area, our adversaries will, risking a future in which biotechnology undermines — rather than supports — our global priorities. Currently, the United States has a biotechnology supply chain problem. American biotech companies rely on cheap, fast products and services from Chinese companies.

The Chinese Communist Party knows this and sees biotech as an economic battleground with the West. They’re playing to win and often playing dirty by stealing the intellectual property of innovative American companies and labs.

I serve as the chair of the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB), a bipartisan group of lawmakers and policy experts working to assess the opportunities and threats presented by these technologies. This spring, we will publish a report for Congress that details actions needed to maintain and strengthen America’s global leadership position, including recommendations specific to agriculture.

Right now, the federal government is not prepared to help our country win the global biotechnology competition. Too often, it is getting in the way of our innovators and making it easier for China to steal our companies’ inventions.

The government must use its existing resources to support our biotechnology companies, workers, and researchers. This means horizon scanning for emerging technologies and restructuring federal agencies and
regulations to support rather than obstruct emerging biotechnologies.

We can make our critical biotech supply chains more resilient and create thousands of good jobs in America by following a simple principle: more of what’s invented in the United States should be made in the United States.

Indiana’s agriculture community has much to gain from a stronger domestic biotechnology sector. Proactively
sustaining our biotechnology industries will grow our economy and improve the lives and health of our people.
Emerging biotechnology research across Indiana can help shape our future.

Congress must enact policies that accelerate innovations at home and onshore our supply chains. Broadly, this will be the focus of the NSCEB’s forthcoming final report. I hope you will visit the Commission’s website here and take a look at the report when it comes out.