A high-profile
legal battle over genetically modified crops continues. The US Supreme
Court in a 7-1 decision yesterday (June 21) did not accept a lower
court’s total nationwide ban on GM alfalfa. But it did agree that the
seeds could be dangerous and did not allow Monsanto to proceed with
selling them. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) must now complete a
study examining whether the seeds will harm the environment before
approving them for restricted planting, a process that could go into
next year, and which could lead to more litigation.


Why
is this such an important issue?

Alfalfa, the
fourth most widely grown crop in the US, is fed to dairy cows. Our
friends at Center for Food Safety (CFS), on behalf of organic farmers,
sued to ban the GM alfalfa out of the very real concern that it would
spread uncontrollably and take over US pasturelands. When we wrote about this court case in May, we noted
that GM foods cause sterility in hamsters, and that the real long-term
risks to human health from these foreign molecules are still unknown.
True organic beef and dairy products would become an impossibility since
all cows would be potentially exposed to the GM alfalfa.

Some
quick background

Monsanto is a
multinational agricultural biotechnology company based in Missouri. It
is also the leading producer of genetically modified seed, and sells 90%
of the US’s GM seeds. Its development and marketing of GM seed and
bovine growth hormone, as well as its aggressive litigation, political
lobbying practices, seed commercialization practices, and “strong-arming” of the seed industry and especially
of farmers have given the company the nickname “the evil empire” in
many quarters. In ANH’s opinion, this nickname is well deserved.

Monsanto is
the world’s leading producer of the extremely toxic herbicide glyphosate,
marketed as Roundup™. Several weed species, known as superweeds, have
developed Roundup resistance largely because of repeated exposure. So
Monsanto has created genetically engineered crops—soy, corn, canola,
cotton, and alfalfa (with wheat currently in development)—which tolerate
the herbicide; they are known as Roundup Ready® crops. Alfalfa is
different from the others because it will spread and propagate itself
without replanting.

The
court case

In 2007, a
federal district judge found that the USDA had failed to consider the
environmental impact before it had approved the GM alfalfa seeds for
commercial planting. He then canceled the USDA’s approval of the seeds,
and imposed a national ban on planting them. But the Supreme Court, in
yesterday’s 7-to-1 decision, found that the lower court judge had gone
too far. The blanket ban prevented the USDA from considering a partial
approval of the seeds, a process known as deregulation.

Monsanto cheered
the ruling and got its version of events into many major media
stories. However, the Supreme Court left in place the lower trial
court’s ruling barring the USDA from deregulating Roundup Ready alfalfa,
and sent the case back down to the lower courts for further
proceedings. What this means, as a practical matter, is that the USDA
will have to complete the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process,
including considering more than 200,000 public comments it has received
since issuing a draft EIS in December of 2009.

“It should be
no surprise that Monsanto’s PR machine is working hard to spin the truth
about the decision,” according to Andrew Kimbrell, executive director
of the Center for Food Safety. “Despite what the biotech seed giant is
claiming, today’s ruling isn’t close to the victory they were hoping
for…. While the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Monsanto by reversing an
injunction that was part of the lower court’s decision, more
importantly, it also ruled that the ban on GMO alfalfa remains intact,
and that the planting and sale of GMO alfalfa remains illegal.”

“This point,
which seems to be lost in some news reports, is actually a huge
victory,” Kimbrell continued. “The Supreme Court ruled that an
injunction against planting was unnecessary since, under lower courts’
rulings, Roundup Ready alfalfa had become a regulated item and was
therefore illegal to plant. In other words, the injunction was
‘overkill’ because our [earlier] victory in lower federal court
determined that USDA violated the National Environmental Policy Act and
other environmental laws when it approved Roundup Ready alfalfa. The
court felt that voiding the USDA’s decision to make the crop legally
available for sale was enough.”

The L.A. Times quoted Paul Achitoff, a lawyer
for Earthjustice, as saying, “To the extent that Monsanto is claiming
this a victory, it’s a very hollow one since no one can plant their
crops.”