Group Seeks Court Order on USDA Over GMO Alfalfa
A U.S. public interest group, Center for Food Safety (CFS), is asking a Washington, D.C. court to force the Department of Agriculture to turn over nearly 1,200 documents related to its approval of Roundup Ready alfalfa.
The group said the USDA approved the genetically altered alfalfa even while acknowledging the crop's potential to do significant environmental and economic damage. It believes the department may have succumbed to outside pressure, possibly from Monsanto, the developer of the genetic trait in the biotech alfalfa.
Monsanto said it had publicly urged unrestricted deregulation and that the CFS concerns were not valid.
"Thousands of farmers across the U.S. currently grow Roundup Ready alfalfa, corn, soybeans, cotton, sugar beets and canola," Kyle McClain, a Monsanto lawyer, said in a statement. "Each of these crops was subjected to thorough scientific review by three separate federal agencies before reaching the market. None presents the types of risks CFS alleges."
The USDA approved Roundup Ready alfalfa in 2011 to be planted without restrictions after several years of litigation and complaints by critics derailed its initial approval in 2005.
Court orders forced the department to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) required under the National Environmental Policy Act. According to the news agency Reuters, the department did complete the EIS and proposed approving the GMO alfalfa with some restrictions to possibly mitigate the risk of contaminating non-GMO crops. It then approved the biotech crop without such restrictions.
Environments have warned that, because alfalfa is a perennial crop largely pollinated by honeybees, it would be almost impossible to keep the genetically modified version from mixing with conventional alfalfa. Cross-fertilization could devastate conventional and organic growers' businesses.
Monsanto has said the biotech alfalfa, which contains a trait the company engineered to withstand treatments of Roundup weed killer, is not an environmental hazard and should be able to coexist with conventional and organic crops.
Nevertheless, a complaint filed by a Washington state alfalfa grower, charging that his crops tested positive for Roundup Ready genetic trait and was rejected for export, was not pursued by the USDA, nor was the farmer compensated, Reuters reports.
