Assistance program
Biotechnology Risk Assessment Research
$43.7 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Agriculture, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 10.219
- What it does
- The purpose of the BRAG program Assistance Listing 10.219, is to support the generation of new information that will assist Federal regulatory agencies [USDA’s – Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service - Biotechnology Regulatory Services (APHIS-BRS), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Food and Drug Administration (FDA)] in making science-based decisions about the environmental effects of introducing genetically engineered (GE) organisms by techniques that use recombinant, synthesized, or amplified nucleic acids to modify or create a genome. The organisms include plants, microorganisms (including fungi, bacteria, and viruses), arthropods, fish, birds, livestock, and other animals these include related wild and agricultural organisms. The statutory program goals and objectives are to authorize and support environmental assessment research to help identify and analyze environmental effects of biotechnology and to authorize research to help regulators develop long-term policies concerning the introduction of such technology. The BRAG program supports applied and/or fundamental research relevant to environmental risk assessment, including biological risk, and the Federal regulatory process. When evaluating GE organisms, Federal regulators must answer the following four general questions: 1. Is there a hazard? (Potential hazard identification.) 2. How likely is the hazard to occur? (Quantifying the probability of occurrence; identifying likely exposure scenarios.) 3. What is the severity and extent of the hazard if it occurs? (Quantifying the effects) and 4. Is there an effect beyond what might occur with an unmodified organism or an organism that has similar traits, but was developed using other technologies?
- Who benefits
- Any public or private research or educational institution or organization.
- Who applies
- Any public or private research or educational institution or organization.
- Authorized by
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
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- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments