President Donald Trump wants mosquitoes to disappear from the “swamp” and gave the EPA a push to speed up approvals for bioengineering projects destined for Washington.
Asset sign a decree On Tuesday, he ordered the EPA, the Departments of Interior and Agriculture, and the General Services Administration, in consultation with the Department of Health and Human Services, to reduce, by 2028, Washington’s invasive mosquito populations by at least 90 percent and its tick population by at least 50 percent.
The EPA is responsible for directing a regulatory framework that considers “sterilization techniques, safe genetic modification, and the use of safe and beneficial bacteria.” The agency was also ordered to act quickly to “register new tick and mosquito control methods or products,” provided that the EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin finds them “both safe and effective”.
The order authorizes the Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. to launch a competition to develop new treatments for diseases transmitted by ticks and mosquitoes, as part of its “Lyme Disease Moonshot” initiative, which is “subject to the availability of funds”.
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