tagged w/ GM sugarbeets
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Today, the Center for Food Safety, Organic Seed Alliance, High Mowing Organic Seeds, and the Sierra Club, filed a lawsuit in federal district court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, challenging the issuance by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of permits purporting to allow the immediate planting of a genetically engineered (GE) sugar beet seed crop. The coalition of organic seed growers and conservationists is represented by Earthjustice and attorneys from the Center for Food Safety.
Less than one month ago, on August 13, 2010, Judge Jeffrey White vacated APHIS’s deregulation of the GE sugar beet variety, making it illegal to plant, and required APHIS to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement, after finding that APHIS had ignored the requirements for assessing the crop’s environmental impacts. The patented sugar beet variety, known as "Roundup Ready" because it has been engineered by Monsanto to tolerate applications of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, allows farmers to douse their fields with the chemical without concern for the crop itself, leading to greater use of the herbicide. Constant application of the herbicide also accelerates development of Roundup-resistant "super weeds," now found on millions of acres of U.S. farmlands, leading to further increased use of the chemical and of other, even more toxic herbicides.
"The Court has already found that the approval of this engineered crop was illegal," said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety. "Rather than complying with the court's order, the USDA is once again acting as a rogue agency in illegally allowing these crops to be planted without the required hard look at their environmental and economic dangers."
The sugar beet seed crop will be grown in and around Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where farmers also grow seed for other crops. Judge White had found that the GE sugar beets, which can cross-pollinate table beets and Swiss chard, may contaminate organic and conventional crops and threaten these farmers’ livelihoods, and deprive farmers and consumers of the choice to grow and consume non-genetically engineered food.
Unwilling to await preparation of the court-ordered EIS and a new, public process on whether to again deregulate and allow for commercialization, APHIS responded to the urgings of the sugar beet industry by issuing permits purporting to allow the industry to plant their Roundup Ready sugar beet seed crop this fall, without any environmental review or public notice and comment, to create seed for a future Roundup Ready sugar beet crop that is still illegal. The unprecedented permitting process for a commercially grown genetically engineered crop violates, among other laws, the National Environmental Policy Act. Although APHIS claims the permits do not allow the crop to flower and spread pollen, the seed crop is expressly intended to flower and create seed next summer. NEPA requires APHIS to first examine the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of the seed crop together with the impacts of the rest of the sugar beet production cycle the seed crop is intended to facilitate.
The plaintiffs have asked the court to issue a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction enjoining the issuance of the permits and any planting pursuant to them.
Earthjustice attorney Paul Achitoff commented: "APHIS's issuance of these permits blatantly violates well established law and flouts the Court's recent rulings. It has become Monsanto’s puppet.”Today, the Center for Food Safety, Organic Seed Alliance, High Mowing Organic Seeds,... more
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The Center for Food Safety has won an important legal victory in the fight for appropriate controls on the introduction of new genetically engineered crops. After ruling that the USDA (under president George W. Bush) shouldn't have approved genetically engineered sugar beets without assessing the Frankencrop's potential to contaminate conventional and organic varieties, a federal judge has blocked future crops of Monsanto's genetically engineered RoundUp Ready sugar beets.
The ball is in the USDA's court. The pro-biotech sugar industry is urging the USDA to rush through an Environmental Impact Statement so they can plant a new crop of Monsanto's Frankenbeets next year.
The only thing that can stop Monsanto's Frankenbeets now is massive public outcry. The Center for Food Safety's legal work has given the USDA, under President Obama now, the opportunity to do the right thing.
Now's our chance to press Obama's USDA to protect biodiversity and human health from contamination with FrankenGenes that never should have been released into the food system!The Center for Food Safety has won an important legal victory in the fight for... more
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A case involving genetically modified (GM) food will be in front of a federal judge Friday in San Francisco.
Researchers say the future of generations of Americans hangs in the balance, as the judge could order a halt to the planting or harvesting of any GM “Roundup Ready” sugar beets in the U.S.
This would strike a blow to growers in the Red River Valley, where more sugar beets are grown than any other region. Most of these growers have already been using Roundup Ready seed varieties for two years.
Scientists say that is no type of positive proof. GM foods are put through a complicated unnatural process. Our reporter April Scott took this on just a few days ago in her article, While We Were Sleeping... GM Food and the Brink of No Return[1]
"The process behind genetically modified food involves a careful re-configuration of genes combining e-coli bacteria, soil bacteria and the cauliflower mosaic virus that causes tumors in plants. They add an antibiotic and then artificially force it into plant cells with a gene invasion technique. All this is so farmers can douse nearly unlimited amounts of Roundup Herbicide on the crops and the plants won’t die."
The Organic & Non-GMO Report published an article in January, stating that scientists are finding many negative impacts of Roundup Ready GM crops.
They say the USDA doesn’t want to publicize studies showing negative impacts.
They spoke to Robert Kremer, a microbiologist with the US Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service and an adjunct professor in the Division of Plant Sciences at the University of Missouri.
He is co-author of one of five papers published in the October 2009 issue of The European Journal of Agronomy that found negative impacts of Roundup herbicide, which is used extensively with Roundup Ready genetically modified crops.
Kremer has been studying the impacts of glyphosate, the primary ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, since 1997.
The Organic & Non-GMO Report interviewed Mr. Kremer about his research and the reluctance of the USDA to publicize the findings of the five papers.A case involving genetically modified (GM) food will be in front of a federal judge... more
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This is a developing story that not only has environmental implications but economic as well. An all out corporate push to now own the sugar market in the US through genetic modification even though court rulings have called for environmental reports. You can be sure they won't be forthcoming soon.This is a developing story that not only has environmental implications but economic... more
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The bad news for the GMO/fertilizer/pesticide set: A federal court in San Francisco rebuked the USDA for greenlighting genetically modified sugar beets without rigorous testing of the novel crop’s environmental impact. And that could have a major impact on the GMO seed industry, because there’s never been a real reckoning among federal agencies about the impact of GMOs.
Want to know who came with the official rationale that GMOs are “substantially equivalent” to conventional crops—and this worthy of a regulatory free ride? It was that noted beautiful minder Dan Quayle, sitting on an Bush I’s Council on Competitiveness in the early ‘90s.
The sugar beet ruling, coming on the heels of a similar one on GMO alfafa, may mark the beginning of the end of that free ride.
Fully 30 percent of the globe’s refined sugar comes from beets—and the U.S. is a major producer. In 2005, the USDA ruled that the use of Monsanto’s new line of Roundup Ready sugar beets—genetically rigged to withstand application of Monsanto’s flagship herbicide—had “no significant impact” on the environment.
Trouble is, the agency did so without issuing a detailed “environmental impact statement,” as it’s arguably required to under the National Environmental Protection Act—and that’s why the Center for Food Safety and other sustainable-food NGOs sued the USDA.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White ruled (PDF here) in favor of the Center for Food Safety argument.
The ruling hinged on the argument that GMO sugar beets can cross-pollinate with and genetically contaminate non-GMO beets—and even with related species like Swiss chard and table beets. (In Willamette County, Ore., epicenter of industrial sugar-beet production, these other beet types are grown commonly, too.)
“In light of the large distances pollen can travel by wind and the context that seed for sugar beets, Swiss chard, and table beets are primarily grown in one valley in Oregon, Plaintiffs have demonstrated that deregulation [of GMO sugar beets] may significantly effect the environment,” the Judge White declared.
So now he’s ordering a detailed environmental impact statement (EIS) from the USDA on GMO sugar beets. But any rigorous EIS will include not only the cross-contamination problem, but also the growing specter of Roundup-tolerant “superweeds,” which are already rampant in many parts of the country where Roundup Ready seeds are commonly used.
The agency might even have to reckon with the recent study that showed that so-called “inert” ingredients in Roundup quite actively damage human cells.
In other words, this ruling—if it stands up under an imminent round of appeals—could be a slippery slope for Monsanto. Investors, for their part, seem a bit concerned—since the ruling was announced Tuesday, the company’s shares are down about 2 percent.
Now for the good news for the great masters of the corn field: President Obama has nominated one of their own as the chief agricultural negotiator at the U.S. Trade Office.
To take the post, Islam “Isi” Siddiqui will have to leave his current perch as vice president for agricultural biotechnology and trade at CropLife America, the trade group representing the U.S. agrichemical industry (member list here). Its mission: to hip the public (and the government) to the ““benefits of pesticides and crop-protection chemicals.”
This is the crew that chided Michelle Obama for daring to opt not to use “crop protection” (i.e., toxic pesticides) in the White House Garden.
Once the Senate’s conservative stalwarts recover from the shock of supporting a man named Islam, they’ll surely wave Siddiqui right through.
As the Doha round of global trade talks lurches on, Siddiqui’s position will be an important one. Southerm-hemisphere nations like India and Brazil are pushing for lower U.S. crop subsidies, while the U.S. is demanding wide-open markets for U.S. goods—everything from foodstuffs like industrial corn to agrichemicals.The bad news for the GMO/fertilizer/pesticide set: A federal court in San Francisco... more
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Who is made accountable in this situation? You know if it were the other way around Monsanto would be suing these farmers.
Excerpt:
Contamination incident highlights challenges of containing GM beets
In May, genetically modified sugar beet plants were found in a soil mix sold to gardeners at a landscape supply business in Corvallis, Oregon. The contamination incident raises doubts about the ability of the sugar beet seed industry to keep GM sugar beets from contaminating non-GMO sugar beets and related plants.
Discovered in soil mix
The GM Roundup Ready sugar beet plants, called “specklings,” were found in Fertile Mix, a soil mix called sold by Pro Bark. Business owners Jeff and Julie Jackson said they had no idea the plants were in the soil mix.
An unidentified individual purchased the mix, found the sugar beet specklings, and contacted Carol Mallory-Smith, a professor of weed science at Oregon State University. Smith took samples from 10 plants, tested those using protein-based GMO “strip” tests, and found that about half tested positive for the genetically modified Roundup Ready gene.
Following the discovery, Pro Bark stopped selling Fertile Mix, but the Jacksons don’t know how much of it had already been sold.
“Extremely difficult to prevent pollen movement”
The source of the soil mix is in question. According to one report, a farmer sold the soil containing the specklings to a materials handling company who in turn sold it to Pro Bark. The farmer may have been growing the GM sugar beet specklings for seed and accidently mixed the specklings with soil.
Seed for Roundup Ready sugar beets is produced in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. In 2008, the first year of commercial production, an estimated 50% of the two million acre US sugar beet crop was GM.
While Smith acknowledges that sugar beets have been grown in the Willamette Valley for many years, she also says, “I believe that it would be extremely difficult to prevent pollen movement.”
“Cluster bomb with Roundup Ready beets”
The incident sounded alarms for Frank Morton, owner of Wild Garden Seeds. Morton’s organic seed business faces a direct threat from GM sugar beets, which could cross pollinate with his table beets and swiss chard plants. Morton has spoken out about the contamination risk from GM beets and is a plaintiff in a lawsuit to force the US Department of Agriculture to conduct a thorough environmental and economic impact study of GM beets.
“They screwed up. Right out of the gate you have problems. Nobody thought about leftover specklings. You can throw them on the ground and they will grow,” he says.
Morton fears that other people purchased the soil mix containing the GM sugar beet specklings and that these will take root and shed pollen near his farm, crossing with—and contaminating—his plants. He likens the situation to “a cluster bomb with Roundup Ready beets around Philomath (the location of Morton’s farm). This is upwind of me and very close.”
No discussion, no responsibility
Morton is frustrated because the two seed companies that could be responsible for the problem, West Coast Beet Seed and Betaseed, aren’t saying anything. “No one has stepped forward to accept responsibility,” he says.Who is made accountable in this situation? You know if it were the other way around... more
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A lawsuit filed last year to stop sales of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready genetically modified sugar beet seed will be argued in a US District Court of Northern California on April 3. One man’s livelihood may hang in the balance.A lawsuit filed last year to stop sales of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready genetically... more
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Super-Olympian Michael Phelps, who famously follows a horrendous junk food diet, has now signed a lucrative deal to promote Kellogg's Corn Flakes and Frosted Flakes. In doing so, he will leverage his celebrity status to push sugary, processed foods onto a generation of children who already suffer from unprecedented rates of obesity and diabetes. Processed sugar, as you know, promotes both diseases and causes nutritional deficiencies at the same time.
The deal has earned Phelps harsh criticism from some doctors, such as nutritionist Rebecca Solomon of Mount Sanai Medical Center. In a Daily News article posted this morning, Solomon said, "I would not consider Frosted Flakes the food of an Olympian."
That's the understatement of the day. I would consider Frosted Flakes to be the food of a generation of obese, diabetic, ADHD kids who need real role models they can follow, not sellout junk food promoters who trade fame for unethical profits.
Does Phelps have the right to promote Frosted Flakes? He has the legal right, sure, but given his considerable notoriety, he has the moral obligation to more carefully consider the consequences of his endorsements. Still, to expect a junk-food-eating 23-year-old to understand nutrition and ethics may be asking a bit too much, but it's not exactly rocket science to understand that processed sugar promotes obesity.
Michael "Sellout" Phelps
In my view, by endorsing Frosted Flakes cereal, Michael Phelps has gone from a Super Olympian to a Super Sellout. He has now proven himself no different than anybody else who pushes unhealthy substances to American kids, other than the fact he can swim really fast. Why couldn't Phelps have sought out a superfood company to endorse instead? Or at least a healthy food product? (Answer: Because cereal companies operate on much higher markups and have a lot more money to burn on celebrity endorsements.)
Alchemists say you can't turn lead into gold, but with this Kellogg's deal, Phelps has done something even more amazing: He's turned gold into fool's gold, because sugared-up corn flakes is not the breakfast of champions; it's the breakfast of fools.Super-Olympian Michael Phelps, who famously follows a horrendous junk food diet, has... more
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Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
-- Anthropologist Margaret Mead
Even if you've heard the above quote many times before, the sentiment expressed is so powerful that I think it's worth repeating. All around the world, small groups of people are organizing public support for improved food safety and successfully challenging large corporations to change their behavior.
That's exactly what Flint Michigan residents Kathleen Kirby and Mark Fisher are banking on: their power to influence change. They're participating in a nationwide consumer boycott of Kellogg's Co. instigated by the Organic Consumers Association. By boycotting the world's largest cereal company, they hope to pressure Kellogg's into rejecting the use of sugar from genetically engineered (GE) sugar beets and to spark widespread market rejection in products ranging from cereal to baby food to candy.
As you may know, Roundup Ready sugar beets are genetically altered to resist Monsanto's toxic weed killer, Roundup, and its active ingredient, glyphosate. But here's the scary truth about these beets:
When the USDA first approved GE sugar beets for commercial planting in 1998, the EPA also increased the maximum allowable residues of glyphosate on sugar beet roots from just 0.2 parts per million to 10ppm. That's a staggering 5,000 percent increase of allowable toxins on beet roots. And, it's little surprise that EPA made this policy change at the request of Monsanto.
Sugar beet roots contain sucrose that's extracted, refined, and processed into the sugar used in the foods we eat. What this means is that the more GE ingredients that find their way into our food, the greater the likelihood that we are ingesting more toxic chemicals.
Thankfully, GE sugar beets have never been grown in the U.S. for sale to food manufacturers -- that is, until this year, when Western farmers planted their first crop of Monsanto's Roundup Ready sugar beets. Right now, over half of the sugar used in U.S. processed foods comes from sugar beets, with beet and cane sugars combined in those products. What's most disturbing is that once GE sugar beets hit the market, which could be as early as next year, there will be no way to know if we're eating GE sugar because GE ingredients are not labeled.
Currently, only four major GE crops are sold commercially -- corn, cotton, soy, and canola. Most of these are engineered to withstand repeated, large doses of herbicides. For the most part, these crops and their byproducts are largely fed to animals with the exception of some minor food ingredients and oils. GE beet sugar breaks with this tradition in that it could become the first major GE ingredient added to almost all processed foods on our grocery store shelves.
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Our food supply is systematically being taken over and poisoned by Monsanto.There is no other way to state it now. If sugarbeets are allowed to continue to become a part of our food supply, then you can expect that EVERYTHING you touch will be genetically modified, and it has NOT been proven to be safe for human consumption or our environment. Please, I have been writing on this for months along with others who have been trying to make people understand how URGENT it is that you get involved in pushing state legislatures to require proper labelling of GM sources in foods. Read up on this at the Monsanto tag and take action.
Citizen activism is the only way to make companies like Monsanto back down. Consumers did it regarding POSILAC, and we can do it with this. Current TV is the only place I have been able to get exposure to this so far aside from my own blog, and it is also because of people here voting the information up so more can see it. So thank you to those who fight the good fight here everyday over those who would do anything in their power to keep this down.
Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed,... more
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