Regulating the GM Sugar Beet
In March of 2005, genetically modified sugar beets appeared on the US market for the first time. Crafted by Monsanto to include a gene from a soil bacterium, this GM beet was able to withstand a copious onslaught of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide (glyphosate). The agricultural industry could spray as much of the weed-killer as it wanted without impacting crops.
Today, Monsanto’s GM sugar beets make up 95 percent of the US crop, having been planted year after year despite a US District Court injunction against planting and even a ruling by US District Court Judge Jeffrey White that the 2011 crop be destroyed due to illegal deregulation. The story of how Monsanto raised its product above the law is a case study of the power of the biotech industry over federal regulators.
The role of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been “essentially to escort genetically engineered crops through their process as fast as possible,” says Page Tomaselli, senior staff attorney at the Center for Food Safety. The USDA was the agency that initially gave the biotech industry the green light for full deregulation of the sugar beets in 2005, allowing the seeds to be sold and planted with no restrictions.
Yet, the USDA did so without properly assessing the environmental impacts, as required under the National Environmental Policy Act. The Center for Food Safety (CFS), along with the Sierra Club, High Mowing Seeds, and the Organic Seed Alliance, successfully sued the USDA. US District Judge Jeffrey S. White ruled that the USDA had violated federal law, and his court placed an injunction on the crop. While the farmers could harvest the existing year’s crop, they couldn’t plant a new one until the USDA completed a proper Environmental Impact Statement.
At this point, Monsanto and allies in the sugar beet industry went to the USDA with concerns that this injunction could cause a sugar shortage. There was not enough non-GM seed stock available to meet the demand for sugar beets anymore, they claimed. The USDA decided to issue field permits for the GM sugar beet crop to be planted in spite of the court’s ruling.
When the seed companies choose to stock GM seeds and not traditional ones, they are creating a situation where they can “potentially say that their hands are tied and all that they have are these genetically engineered seeds,” says Tomaselli.
Who Regulates the Regulators?
The nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice responded to these field permits with legal action, arguing that these permits were illegal given the District Court order to cease planting.
“We had to run into court and ask the judge to stop them,” Earthjustice managing attorney Paul Achitoff told Reuters that day, “It’s an extreme sort of a thing ... but the circumstances were such that there wasn’t any alternative. They basically had dared the court to stop them.”
On November 30th, 2010, Judge White ordered that the newly planted GM seedlings be removed from the ground.
However, in February of 2011, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Judge White’s original injunction. Instead of addressing whether the USDA issued illegal permits, it perplexingly looked at whether the seedlings caused “irreparable harm.” Judge Thomas of that court wrote, “Biology, geography, field experience, and permit restrictions make irreparable injury unlikely.”
The court vacated Judge White’s original injunction. The USDA issued temporary permits for the sale and planting of GM sugar beets while it completed an Environmental Impact Statement. Once the statement was finished, the agency permanently deregulated GM sugar beets.
Today, over 90 percent of the US sugar beet crop is genetically modified.