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Friday, 29 January 2010 01:04 |
Billings Gazette
January 26, 2010
Billings Gazette
Tom Lutey
January 26, 2010
www.billingsgazette.com
A Supreme Court case targeting Roundup Ready alfalfa could write new ground rules for legal battles involving other genetically modified crops, including Montana and Wyoming sugar beets.
At issue is whether a lower court erred when it sided with environmentalists alleging imminent danger if Monsanto Co. sold alfalfa seed genetically engineered to resist the popular weed killer Roundup.
Monsanto is arguing that its opponents should have been required to produce evidence that danger was indeed imminent.
The Center for Food Safety, representing several consumer and farm-related groups, argued that Monsanto alfalfa could cross-pollinate with organic varieties, making them unmarketable. Sales of Monsanto’s seed have been on hold for three years as the result of the lower court’s ban-imposing injunction.
Likewise, Monsanto is arguing that it should have had the chance, through evidentiary hearing, to prove that its alfalfa isn’t a threat.
Days after the Supreme Court agreed to hear Monsanto’s appeal, the Center for Food Safety petitioned a lower court for a similar ban on Monsanto’s Roundup Ready sugar beets, a variety from which roughly half the nation’s sugar is produced. A Supreme Court decision favorable to Monsanto would force the company’s opponents to back up their danger claims with scientific facts.
“What this does, is when you have activist plaintiffs who make these allegations in order to get something as significant as an injunction, they have to prove there’s imminent danger,” said Garrett Kasper, Monsanto spokesman. “There was no discussion in this case, no taking scientific evidence into account.”
For farmers in Montana and Wyoming, the two cases hit very close to home. Seed farmers like John Wold of Park City had been growing Roundup Ready alfalfa for two years before the a 9th Circuit District Court judge in California imposed the sale ban in 2007.
“I’m pretty confident that a year from now we’ll be growing Roundup Ready alfalfa,” Wold said.
The weed-free alfalfa was a hit with weed-weary dairy farmers, who are known to slice a hay bale like bread searching for unwanted thistle or bindweed, Wold said. Even if the Supreme Court rules against Monsanto, the Roundup Ready alfalfa will likely come back, he said.
The original alfalfa lawsuit centered on whether the U.S. Department of Agriculture did enough fact-finding before approving Roundup Ready alfalfa for commercial sale. The District Court ruled that the USDA hadn’t done enough and needed to complete a full environmental impact statement to determine the alfalfa’s safety.
The statement is now done and the USDA is soliciting public comment on its recommendation that Roundup Ready alfalfa return to the commercial market.
Organic hay farmers like Dina Hoff of Glendive aren’t swayed by the USDA’s assurances that the genetically modified alfalfa is safe. She said the USDA made it difficult for people to object to its recommendation through the public comment period, which ends Feb. 16.
“I’m hoping that a lot of people are going to comment. They released this over the holidays, so it’s a short comment period,” Hoff said. “The document is 200 pages, 1,400 with all the appendices.”
Conventional dairy farmers may have wanted the alfalfa, but organic dairy farmers didn’t, Hoff said. If there’s a question of whether the hay they feed isn’t organic, their operations will be ruined, she said.
But producers wanting genetically modified crops say the fact that Roundup Ready alfalfa and sugar beets were in the commercial production without incident proves that the crops are safe.
“The plaintiffs waited five years after biotech sugar beets were approved for planting before filing their lawsuit,” said Luther Markwart of the American Sugar Beet Growers Association. “They’re now claiming irreparable harm is imminent on a product that’s been used by 95 percent of the sugar beet industry?”
Sugar beet farmers nervously await the March hearing, which will determine whether the seeds they’ve planted for two years will be allowed to be sown again. There are concerns about finding an alternate seed, as 95 percent of the nation’s sugar beet acres are planted with Monsanto’s Roundup Ready seed.
To the Center for Food Safety, the appeal to the Supreme Court seems like a way to sap the effectiveness of injunctions, a tool of last resort for stopping crops that weren’t adequately vetted by the USDA before being put in commercial use.
The center’s lawsuits aim to force the USDA to go back and thoroughly examine genetically modified crops before approving them. And with both alfalfa and sugar beets, the court sided with the center.
“What really is at issue are these arcane issues about what kind of process needs to happen before the EIS is put in place,” said George Kimbrell, Center For Food Safety attorney.
The Supreme Court hasn’t set a date for hearing the Monsanto appeal, but the bench is positioning to hear it. Justice Stephen Breyer has recused himself because his brother, 9th District Judge Charles Breyer, heard the alfalfa case in a lower court and ruled in favor of the Center. Clarence Thomas, a former staff attorney for Monsanto’s herbicide division, is not recusing himself.
http://www.billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/article_7491faae-0b00-11df-b8ec-001cc4c03286.html
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