Last August, Federal Judge Jeffrey White issued a stinging rebuke to
the USDA for its process on approving new genetically modified seeds. He
ruled that the agency's practice of "deregulating" novel seed varieties
without first performing an environmental impact study violated the
National Environmental Policy Act.
The
target of Judge White's ire was the USDA's 2005 approval of Monsanto's
Roundup Ready sugar beets, engineered to withstand doses of the
company's own herbicide. White's ruling effectively revoked the approval
of Monsanto's novel beet seeds pending an environmental impact study,
and cast doubt upon the USDA's notoriously industry-friendly way of
regulating GM seeds.
A
rigorous environmental impact assessment would not likely be kind to
Roundup Ready sugar beets. First, sugar-beet seeds are cultivated mainly
in Oregon's Willamette Valley, also an important seed-production area for
crops closely related to sugar beets, such as organic chard and table
beets. The engineered beets could easily cross-pollinate with the other
varieties, causing severe damage to a key resource for organic and other non-GMO farmers.
Second, Monsanto's already-unregulated Roundup Ready crops -- corn, soy,
and cotton -- have unleashed a plague of Roundup-resistant
"superweeds," forcing farmers to apply ever-higher doses of Roundup and
other weed-killing poisons. Finally, the Roundup herbicide itself is proving much less
ecologically benign than advertised, as Tom Laskawy has shown.
How has the Obama USDA responded to Judge White's rebuke? By repeatedly defying it, most recently in
February, when the agency moved to allow farmers to plant the
engineered seeds even though the impact study has yet to be completed.
Its rationale for violating the court order will raise an eyebrow of
anyone who read Gary Taubes' recent New York Times Magazine piece teasing
out the health hazards of the American sweet tooth: the USDA feared
that the GMO sugar beet ban would cause sweetener prices to rise. Thus
the USDA places the food industry's right to cheap sweetener for its
junk food over the dictates of a federal court.
In
early April, the USDA made what I'm reading as a second response to
Judge White, this one even more craven. To satisfy the legal system's
pesky demand for environmental impact studies of novel GMO crops, the
USDA has settled upon a brilliant solution: let the GMO industry conduct
its own environmental impact studies, or pay other researchers to. The
USDA announced the program in the Federal Register for April 7, 2011 [PDF].
The
biotech/agrichemical industry has applauded the new plan. Karen Batra
of the Biotechnology Industry Organization told the Oregon-based ag
journal Capital Press that the program will likely speed up the
registration process for GMO crops and make the USDA's approach less
vulnerable to legal challenges like the rebuke from Judge White. Capital Press summed up Batra's assessment of the plan like this: "The
pilot program will not only help move crops through the process more
quickly, but the added resources will also help the documents hold up in
court."
In
other words, the industry plans to produce studies that find its novel
products environmentally friendly, and fully expects the USDA to accept
their assessments. Judge White had ruled that the USDA should be more
rigorous in assessing the risks of new GMO crops, yet his decision seems
to be having the opposite effect. No doubt the USDA's latest scheme
reflects the administration's stated desire to not be too "burdensome" in regulating industry.
Tom Philpott is Grist’s senior food and agriculture writer.
Grist
The full documentary 'The World According to Monsanto' by French movie maker Marie Monique Robin from April 2008 has now been uploaded by wideeyecinema. To view it click here
Also, for more information, see 'The World According to Monsanto'