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Judge Halts Sale of Biotech Alfalfa Seeds •
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Court Halt on GMO Alfalfa Shows USDA Failure
By Carey Gillam
Reuters
Thursday 15 March 2007
Kansas City, Missouri - A court decision overturning US government approval
for a biotech alfalfa underscores complaints made for years that the USDA is
failing to adequately oversee genetically altered crops, biotech crop critics
said on Tuesday.
And the critics believe it sets a precedent that should prompt more stringent
oversight of these controversial crops.
"It is a big deal for the court to do that. It is the first time it has
happened in the US," said Margaret Mellon, director of the Union of Concerned
Scientists Food and Environment Program, which is not a party to the case.
There have been concerns for years about the USDA's lack of proper oversight.
Indeed, other recent court rulings have leveled criticism against US government
oversight of biotech crops.
"There are some serious problems there," said Mellon. "They
need to be fixed."
USDA officials would not comment Tuesday, a day after US District Court Judge
Charles Breyer of the Northern District of California issued an order on Monday
that vacated USDA approval of Monsanto Co.'s "Roundup Ready" alfalfa.
The crop, genetically altered to withstand treatments of Monsanto's Roundup
herbicide, was approved in 2005. But Judge Breyer immediately halted any more
seed sales and ordered that any planting must cease after March 30 after he
determined that the USDA violated the law in allowing unrestricted commercial
planting of the crop.
The judge said the USDA should have prepared an environmental impact statement
before deregulating the Roundup Ready alfalfa. Such a statement is designed
to explore negative consequences that might result from a release.
In the case of biotech alfalfa, a perennial livestock feed crop, several farm,
environmental and consumer activists groups said there were many potential problems,
including contamination of organic and conventional alfalfa supplies with the
biotech version.
Other crops, including most notably corn and rice, have already been contaminated
with biotech varieties, forcing in some situations costly recalls and lost export
sales.
"I challenged them over and over to give us any scientific evidence that
they can control the gene flow from these crops. So far they haven't been able
to do that," said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of The Center for
Food Safety, which led the lawsuit against the US Agriculture Department.
"This technology was put out into the environment without any idea of
how to control it," he said. "Now the agency for the first time will
have to come up with some sort of answers as to how you can control this and
be accountable for it."
Like USDA, Monsanto officials also declined to discuss the potential ramifications
of the ruling Tuesday, but company spokeswoman Lori Fisher said Monsanto was
informing Roundup Ready alfalfa seed dealers of the court order and outlining
actions they must take.
"Basically, this communication informs dealers to stop sales of Roundup
Ready alfalfa under court order, to secure Roundup Ready alfalfa seed not sold
in inventory and to expect further instructions as the situation develops,"
Fisher said.
Over the last decade, the USDA has approved applications for more than 70 genetically
modified organism (GMO) crop lines, many of which have been embraced by farmers
because they are easier and/or more profitable to grow.
Sharon Bomer, a vice president at the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO),
said her group, which represents the interests of biotech companies, including
Monsanto, said that the safety of alfalfa and other commercialized biotech crops
was not an issue. And she said the court ruling on alfalfa appeared limited.
"We think this deals with only one situation," she said.
Still, the oversight, primarily handled by the USDA's Animal Health and Plant
Health Inspection Service, has been repeatedly criticized as lacking. An Office
of Inspector General audit of APHIS' and its biotechnology regulatory services
unit found numerous holes in oversight efforts in a report issued in December
2005.
The government is currently reviewing and rewriting the regulations for field
testing and for deregulation of genetically modified crops with a final report
on the overhaul due out in the next few months.
In the meantime, Kimbrell said he was dismayed that the USDA appears to remain
more focused on supporting Monsanto's commercial needs than on protecting the
interests of others in agriculture.
"I have never seen a government agency so openly and unashamedly defend
the interests of a corporation and not represent the interests of farmers,"
he said.
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Judge Halts Sale of Biotech Alfalfa Seeds
By Marc Lifsher
The Los Angeles Times
Tuesday 13 March 2007
Activists applaud the preliminary ruling
as first ban on genetically manipulated crops.
A federal judge Monday overturned the Bush administration's 2005 approval of
genetically engineered alfalfa seeds and stopped their sale for now, in what
activists hailed as the first ban on selling such crops.
U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer in San Francisco found that the U.S.
Department of Agriculture failed to adequately conduct an environmental impact
study before approving them for sale.
Monday's ruling grew out of the judge's decision last month that the USDA failed
to take seriously concerns that genetically altered seeds could migrate to other
alfalfa crops. Nothing in the National Environmental Protection Act, "the
relevant regulations, or the case law support such a cavalier response,"
he said.
The seeds, developed by agribusiness giant Monsanto Co., are now in their second
season of use. Such genetically engineered seeds are grown in 200,000 of the
nation's 23 million acres of alfalfa, widely grown for hay and animal grazing.
The seeds were re-engineered so that alfalfa plants can resist the ill effects
of another Monsanto product, a widely used herbicide known by the trade name
of Roundup. As a result, some farmers say, they can get greater crop yield and
better quality alfalfa.
California is the nation's No. 1 alfalfa producer with about 1 million acres
under cultivation. The state's 2004 harvest was worth $853 million.
Breyer's preliminary injunction came in a lawsuit brought by the San Francisco-based
Center for Food Safety and other environmental groups.
It is the first ban on the genetic manipulation of traits of basic crops, such
as corn, canola, soybeans and cotton, people familiar with the case confirmed.
Boosters of organic foods called the judge's order a landmark in protecting
the public interest. A representative of the Agriculture Department in Washington
could not be reached.
But some farmers, agricultural scientists and officials at Monsanto said the
ruling, if upheld, would pose a major setback for the burgeoning U.S. biotech
industry.
"It's a very significant development, the next step in the pushback by
the federal court system for the grossly inadequate environmental review of
genetically engineered crops," said Charles Benbrook, chief scientist of
the Organic Center, a nonprofit Rhode Island-based group that does research
into the benefits of organic food.
The ban will remain in effect until the judge considers lifting it or making
it permanent. Monsanto is banking on increasing the acreage by convincing Breyer
at an April hearing that farmers can use so-called Roundup Ready alfalfa seeds
without contaminating neighboring fields.
Researchers have developed "stewardship" practices that provide "a
robust and responsible approach to managing the environmental questions raised
by the plaintiffs in this case," said Jerry Steiner, Monsanto's executive
vice president.
"I hope this is just a bump in the road," added Phillip Bowles, who
grows Roundup Ready alfalfa on about one-tenth of his 6,000-acre alfalfa farm
in Los Banos in Merced County. Without the new seeds, farmers will be forced
to use herbicides that are far stronger than Roundup if they want to control
weeds, Bowles said.
Allen Van Deynze, a biotechnology scientist at UC Davis who's done extensive
research on genetically modified alfalfa, said that genetic plants could be
managed effectively so that less than 1% of the seeds would contaminate other
crops. "We've managed gene flow in the seed industry for 100 years now,"
he said.
Although Van Deynze confirmed that he received some of the financial support
for his research from the seed industry, he stressed that all his papers had
been thoroughly reviewed by other scientists in the field.
Van Deynze said that he and his colleagues at UC Davis also had developed management
plans for using Roundup Ready seeds that have been accepted by alfalfa growers,
who use conventional and organic methods.
But Jim Rickert, who raises 3,000 acres of organic and conventional alfalfa
in Siskiyou and Shasta counties in Northern California, was skeptical. "I've
heard this particular statement made before," he said.
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