AGENCY DECISION LOOMS AS THIRTY DAY REVIEW PERIOD ON GMO ALFALFA CLOSES

CITING FLAWED SCIENCE, HARM TO FARMERS AND PROLIFERATION OF ROUNDUP-RESISTANT WEEDS, CFS RECOMMENDS TIME OUT ON ROUNDUP READY ALFALFA DECISION PROCESS

The Center for Food Safety sent an open letter today to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack and other key Agencies requesting that the USDA carefully reconsider, based on sound science, the full range of impacts that would ensue from the commercial planting of genetically engineered (GE) Roundup Ready (RR) alfalfa, developed jointly by Monsanto and Forage Genetics. The letter comes on the final day of a 30-day “review period” for the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for RR alfalfa, in which comments could be submitted for consideration by USDA, before the Department publishes a record of decision on how it will proceed.

“We appreciate that Secretary Vilsack has taken a very important first by acknowledging the serious harms caused by transgenic contamination, and proposing measures to address it. However, many of the measures proposed by USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service are not supported by sound science, and there is in fact evidence showing they will not work to prevent contamination in the real world. Therefore, the only option that will protect organic and conventional alfalfa growers and dairies is for the USDA to hold off on the approval of GE alfalfa,” said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety (CFS). “Gene flow and resistant weeds have already caused substantial harm to thousands of American farmers, and must be properly addressed in a scientifically sound manner by USDA before any decisions are made.”

Last Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture convened a forum that included Vilsack to discuss the regulatory process for RR alfalfa. Despite the intense calls from Republican Committee members for immediate and full deregulation (i.e. approval), Secretary Vilsack strongly defended USDA’s efforts to achieve an equitable outcome that protects farmers who choose to grow conventional or organic alfalfa from contamination by Roundup Ready alfalfa, citing booming sales of organically grown products in domestic and foreign markets. Buyers in Japan, Saudia Arabia and other top export markets for U.S. alfalfa and alfalfa seed often reject GMO-contaminated supplies. Transgenic contamination occurs when bees carry pollen from a RR alfalfa plant to fertilize a conventional one, sometimes over several miles, and through unintended dispersal of transgenic seeds.

In the letter to Secretary Vilsack, CFS calls on USDA to base its decision on sound science and the interests of farmers, and to avoid rushing the process to meet the marketing timelines or sales targets of Monsanto, Forage Genetics or other entities.

CFS also addressed the following key points that were not properly assessed in the FEIS:

• Contamination “target” unjustified – USDA uncritically adopted Forage Genetics’ “target” of 0.5% for maximum transgenic contamination as the basis for “co-existence,” despite the fact that far lower levels of contamination are easily detectable and would result in substantial loss of markets for conventional alfalfa growers.
  
  
• Liability, implementation and oversight – Citing  over 200 past contamination episodes that have cost farmers hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales, CFS demands that liability for financial losses incurred by farmers due to transgenic contamination be assigned to the crop developers. CFS also calls on USDA to take a more active oversight role to ensure that any stewardship plans are properly implemented and enforced.
  
  
• Roundup Ready alfalfa will substantially increase herbicide use – USDA’s assessment misrepresented conventional alfalfa as utilizing more herbicides than it does, which in turn provided a false rationale for introducing herbicide-promoting Roundup Ready alfalfa. In fact, USDA’s own data shows that just 7% of alfalfa hay acres are treated with herbicides. USDA’s projections in the FEIS show that substantial adoption of Roundup Ready alfalfa would trigger large increases in herbicide use of up to 23 million lbs. per year.
  
  
• Harms from glyphosate-resistant weeds – USDA’s sloppy and unscientific treatment of glyphosate-resistant (GR) weeds ignored the significant contribution that RR alfalfa could make to their rapid evolution. USDA failed to analyze how GR weeds fostered by currently grown RR crops are increasing herbicide use; spurring more use of soil-eroding tillage; and reducing farmer income through increased weed control costs, an essential baseline analysis.
  
  
• Failure to meet the high standards of scientific integrity demanded by the President and his Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). CFS found numerous instances in the FEIS in which USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS):
  
  Knowingly relied on obsolete data to obscure serious problems with Roundup Ready technology, inconsistent with OSTP’s call to utilize information “of the highest integrity;”
  
  Knowingly utilized false “simulation” data and analyses on pesticide use from entities with close financial ties to the biotechnology industry that obfuscated the pesticide-promoting impacts of Roundup Ready technology, in violation of OSTP’s requirement that scientific data and analyses be shielded from “inappropriate political influence;”
  
  Assigned unqualified personnel to write sections of the Roundup Ready FEIS, which resulted in an incompetent treatment that wrongly discounted and dismissed the serious weed resistance-promoting impacts that Roundup Ready alfalfa is likely to have, thus contravening OSTP’s call for scientific personnel to be selected based “on their scientific and technological knowledge, credentials, experience and integrity.”

The FEIS comes in response to a 2007 lawsuit brought by CFS, in which a federal court ruled that the USDA’s approval of GE alfalfa violated environmental laws by failing to analyze risks such as the contamination of conventional and organic alfalfa, the evolution of glyphosate-resistant weeds, and increased use of glyphosate herbicide, sold by Monsanto as Roundup. The Court banned new plantings of GE alfalfa until USDA completed a more comprehensive assessment of these impacts. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals twice affirmed the national ban on GE alfalfa planting. In June 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ban on Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Alfalfa until and unless future deregulation occurs.

#  #  #

The Center for Food Safety is a national, non-profit, membership organization founded in 1997 to protect human health and the environment by curbing the use of harmful food production technologies and by promoting organic and other forms of sustainable agriculture. CFS currently represents more than 175,000 members across the nation.