The Beltway’s Biggest Scofflaw: The USDA Repeatedly Violates its Own Rules on GMO Crops

[cali]

Posted by Barry on January 10, 2011
The beet goes on and on and on.

The beet goes on and on and on.

If you want to understand the Obama administration’s cynical, schizophrenic, attitude toward agricultural issues, consider Tom Stearns. He is the founder and president of High Mowing Seeds, a small Vermont company that sells 100 percent organic fruit and vegetable seeds, primarily to commercial growers. The seeds sown in the First Lady’s chemical-free White House garden are ordered from High Mowing each spring, and Stearns has been to Washington, D.C., to consult with Sam Kass, the chef who oversees the nation’s most high-profile organic plot.

At the same time, Stearns is suing the Obama administration’s United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). High Mowing, along with the Center for Food Safety, the Sierra Club, and the Organic Seed Alliance, took the agriculture department into court in 2008, charging that it had disobeyed its own rules—and the law—when it granted farmers permission to plant sugar beets that were genetically modified to survive applications of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide without first compiling the legally required Environment Impact Statement.

Of all the plaintiffs in the case, Stearns has the most to lose. By the USDA’s own definition, crops grown from genetically modified (GMO) seeds cannot be labeled “organic.” Sugar beets are notoriously promiscuous, not only breeding with themselves, but with their close cousins, table beets and Swiss chard, both of which Stearns sells. If his seeds became contaminated with GMO genes, they would have to be destroyed.

But all of us have a stake in the game. Widespread contamination could mean that consumers would no longer have the option of buying non-GMO beets and chard. Half of the sugar we consume comes from beets, and does not have to be labeled as being made from GMO sources, meaning that Americans are being force-fed GMO products .

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http://politicsoftheplate.com/?p=699

[The Straight Story]

1. Thought you might like to see these:

http://www.usda.gov/documents/USDAContinuedDialogueConstructiveCoexistence.pdf

Full press release on the alfalfa (the link above addresses not in the below):
http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentidonly=true&contentid=2011/01/0035.xml

And some more here:

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/


Working on researching this more in-depth, so if you find anything else let me know.

[Leithan]

2. The lobbyists have jiggered the rules so that terminology means nothing anymore

Example: "Free-range" chicken. Turns out, what that actually means is that the birds "have access" to the outdoors. They could be in a factory cage and be held up to an open window for five minutes a day, and voila! Free-range!

[The Straight Story]

3. On sugar beets - here is Monsanto's request

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/brs/aphisdocs/03_32301p_pea2.pdf

Monsanto Company and KWS SAAT AG Supplemental Request for Partial Deregulation of Sugar Beet Genetically Engineered to be Tolerant to the Herbicide Glyphosate

336 pages