USDA will allow planting of GMO alfalfa | Morrow County Sentinel.com

By MARY CLARE JALONICK Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Agri­cul­ture Depart­ment is allow­ing wide­spread plant­ing of genet­i­cally mod­i­fied alfalfa, attempt­ing to bring to a close a lengthy legal and reg­u­la­tory process in which organic pro­duc­ers attempted to cur­tail the use of the mod­i­fied crop.

The deci­sion is a blow to the organic foods indus­try, which com­plains that mod­i­fied seeds can con­t­a­m­i­nate their organic crops through pol­li­na­tion, bring­ing genet­i­cally mod­i­fied foods into their fields. The Agri­cul­ture Depart­ment has said the mod­i­fied alfalfa — used pri­mar­ily for hay for cat­tle — is safe, but some con­sumers don’t want to eat foods derived from it, includ­ing milk or beef. The grow­ing organic indus­try and its mil­lions of con­sumers have long been wary of genet­i­cally mod­i­fied seed com­pa­nies such as Mon­santo, cit­ing the purity of nat­ural seeds, the ethics of eat­ing mod­i­fied foods and pos­si­ble envi­ron­men­tal dam­age from cre­at­ing new vari­eties of crops.

Farm­ers who use the seeds say they boost their crop yields and help reduce prices for con­sumers in the gro­cery store. The biotech com­pa­nies say they are doing their part vol­un­tar­ily to restrict where their alfalfa crops are planted so they don’t con­t­a­m­i­nate other, non-engineered crops.

Agri­cul­ture Sec­re­tary Tom Vil­sack had said in Decem­ber that the depart­ment was con­sid­er­ing, as one of sev­eral options, gov­ern­ment restric­tions on plant­ing of the mod­i­fied alfalfa, giv­ing pro­duc­ers of organic and other non-engineered alfalfa hope. But the depart­ment came under sharp crit­i­cism for that pro­posal from the genet­i­cally engineered-seed com­pa­nies and Congress.

In a Jan­u­ary hear­ing, sev­eral mem­bers from farm states ques­tioned the pro­posal, say­ing it politi­cized the reg­u­la­tory process. Because the alfalfa is safe, its plant­ing should be allowed, they argued.

Vil­sack dis­agreed that the issue had been politi­cized, say­ing the depart­ment is sim­ply try­ing to help two large agri­cul­tural indus­tries — organ­ics and biotech com­pa­nies — peace­fully coex­ist. He said Thurs­day the depart­ment will make other efforts to ensure that organic and other non-modified alfalfa seeds remain pure by doing addi­tional research on pre­vent­ing cross con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of seeds and improv­ing detec­tion of that con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. He said the depart­ment will make efforts to ensure that pure vari­eties of the alfalfa seeds are preserved.

The organic indus­try said it wasn’t enough.

“Con­sumers will not tol­er­ate the acci­den­tal pres­ence of genetic engi­neered mate­ri­als in organic prod­ucts, yet GE crops con­tinue to pro­lif­er­ate unchecked,” said Chris­tine Bush­way, direc­tor and CEO of the Organic Trade Association.

George Siemon, CEO of Organic Val­ley, one of the country’s largest organic food com­pa­nies, worked with the USDA as it made the deci­sion. He said the con­tro­versy over the alfalfa has swirled as organ­ics have grown expo­nen­tially and biotech crops have pros­pered as well. A large num­ber of crops — includ­ing soy­beans and corn — are made from some sort of genet­i­cally engi­neered component.

“Organ­ics have suc­ceeded and also the biotech­nol­ogy sec­tor has suc­ceeded, and it’s nat­u­rally com­ing to a head right now,” he said. “There’s no doubt that in the last five years, right or wrong, con­sumer con­cerns about this tech­nol­ogy has just magnified.”

USDA’s deci­sion on the alfalfa — which is genet­i­cally engi­neered to be resis­tant to the pop­u­lar weed killer Roundup, so it can be used with­out hurt­ing the crop — has wound through the reg­u­la­tory process and the courts. A 2007 fed­eral court deci­sion said the USDA had not given enough con­sid­er­a­tion to the effects of the mod­i­fied alfalfa, and a judge placed an injunc­tion on plant­ing the crop. The U.S. Supreme Court said last year that deci­sion had gone too far.

There are sev­eral other USDA deci­sions on mod­i­fied crops com­ing soon, Vil­sack said, includ­ing on mod­i­fied sugar beets and corn amy­lase, which is made to pro­duce ethanol fuel. But he insisted that each crop is unique and the deci­sion to allow unre­stricted plant­ing of alfalfa is not a prece­dent for the others.

Despite Vilsack’s assur­ances, many in the agri­cul­ture indus­try have closely watched the decision.

“I think there’s a gen­eral sigh of relief in U.S. agri­cul­ture that this is the right deci­sion,” said Mark McCaslin, pres­i­dent of For­age Genet­ics Inter­na­tional, a co-developer of the Roundup Ready alfalfa. “I am sure there were a lot of peo­ple who were nervous.”

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Posted by Randa Wagner on Apr 17 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.