EINNEWS, December 2—Monsanto is raising the ante in the burgeoning battle over the safety and legality of its genetically engineered seeds.
The giant biotech company said Wednesday it would appeal a federal court’s ruling that biotech sugar beets should be uprooted.
U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White ruled Tuesday that the plantings of “Roundup Ready” biotech sugar beet seedlings violated a court ban and ordered that they need to be destroyed.
White issued the ban against further planting in August, finding that the U.S. Department of Agriculture illegally approved the crop five years ago by not first conducting an environmental impact study as required by federal law.
The USDA nevertheless in September issued permits for the planting of seedlings for future crops. A consortium of environmental and consumer groups appealed that decision and on Tuesday Judge White agreed that the plantings should be uprooted.
Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, said “The issues that will be appealed are important to all U.S. farmers who choose to plant biotech crops. We will spare no effort in challenging this ruling on the basis of flawed legal procedure and lack of consideration of important evidence.”
The case has important implications for the 2011 sugar beet crop, which generates half the sugar used in the U.S., and for other major crops as well. Monsanto’s Roundup Ready resistant seeds are widely used for corn, cotton and other agricultural uses.
Earthjustice, one of the groups that brought the case against the USDA and had asked the judge to order the young plants be destroyed, said the action was the first court-ordered destruction of a GM crop. Earthjustice attorney Paul Achitoff said the plaintiffs were confident that the judge’s ruling would be upheld.
While the chief defendant in the case is the USDA, Monsanto has intervened because it owns the intellectual property rights to the sugarbeet technology, and sales of both its seeds and weed killer represent a major source of revenue and profit for the company. If it loses the case, Monsanto could be the target of liability actions from farmers using its products.
Monsanto said on Wednesday that more than 1 million acres of Roundup Ready sugar beet varieties had been planted in 10 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces.
The Roundup Ready technology has become popular with farmers because it results in crops resistant to the Roundup Ready herbicide. Concerns have been growing, however, because weeds are developing resistant strains, requiring more herbicide use to kill them.
Environmental and consumer groups also worry about signs of increased toxicity in the water and soil from use of the herbicide.
USDA officials in November circulated a draft proposal to permit the Monsanto beets back in the fields by next year under a permit subject to conditions “to prevent any potential plant pest risks.”
Plaintiffs in the case include the Center for Food Safety, Organic Seed Alliance, High Mowing Organic Seeds and the Sierra Club. Read more news about genetically modified sugar beets at http://agriculture.einnews.com/news/genetically-modified-sugar-beets.
For more agriculture news, visit Agriculture Industry Today (http://agriculture.einnews.com), a agriculture media monitoring service from EIN News.