If PCR tests already exist to detect Covid, why not do PCR’s to trace cotton? That was the question MeiLin Wan, vice president of textiles at Applied DNA Sciences, posed to BOF. Of course, making such a utopia a reality requires overcoming some challenges to achieve an effective method of tracing cotton back to its geographical origin. Still, some companies are already seeding the change.

Fashion brands concerned about the origin of their cotton could put a fiber sample in a machine and know exactly where it came from. That pressure to rid their clothing of cotton harvested under forced labor or falsely labeled GMO-free would disappear.