Fighting Back Against GE Crops

Farmers and environmentalists are suing federal agencies for allowing a bio-technology giant to market genetically modified alfalfa, allegedly without fully considering potential harm to the American food supply and environment.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. district court against the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency, argues that federal regulators illegally approved Monsanto's application for commercial sale of genetically engineered (GE) alfalfa.

"Our belief is that there seems to be an increasingly frequent systemic lack of objectivity in a lot of the regulatory decisions that are flowing from USDA," said co-plaintiff Pat Trask, whose family has run an alfalfa-seed business in South Dakota for nearly a century.

Plaintiffs say approval by the USDA of Monsanto's request to market genetically modified alfalfa without regulation will eventually destroy farmers' ability to grow alfalfa free of engineered genes and will lead to increased use of harmful herbicides. Filed in the Northern District of California federal court, the lawsuit charges that regulators violated the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Plant Protection Act.

Experiments with nature

One of the most widely grown crops in the U.S., alfalfa generates an estimated $11.7 billion dollars yearly, according to the USDA. Though mostly grown for animal feed, the protein- and vitamin-rich purple-flowered legume is also sold for direct human consumption.

In 1998, Monsanto began developing a genetically modified strain called Roundup Ready Alfalfa. Like Monsanto's Roundup Ready Corn and Roundup Ready Soy, the GE alfalfa is designed to resist to the company's flagship herbicide product Roundup -- one of the most widely used industrial weed-killers in the world.

The USDA approved Roundup Ready Alfalfa for commercial sale last fall, making it the first large-scale perennial food crop approved and deregulated by the U.S. government. To date, GE alfalfa is grown on 50,000 acres across the country.

Some question the need to create an herbicide-resistant strain in the first place. According to the Center for Food Safety, a public interest and environmental advocacy organization, more than 80 percent of alfalfa grown in the United States is raised without any herbicides.

"Alfalfa is not something that has a big need of weed control," said Trusk, whose family has been growing traditional strains of alfalfa on the edge of the Black Hills for four generations. The crop's natural growth pattern shades the ground, discouraging most weeds, Trusk noted.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are concerned that the increased planting of Roundup Ready Alfalfa will similarly expand the use of toxic chemicals on farms. Scientific studies conducted by the British government and by academic researchers at Ohio State University have documented the evolution of "superweeds" -- nuisance plants ironically resistant to Roundup itself. Conservationists and public health advocates fear that farmers would then turn to even more toxic chemicals to kill the emboldened intruders.

"That creates a cycle of poisoning and dependency in agriculture which escalates over time, often referred to as a pesticide treadmill," said Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides, a D.C.-based environmental group and co-plaintiff in the suit. "[This cycle] belies the stated intent of those promoting the technology as one that would reduce pesticide dependence."

The groups are also concerned that bees, which help pollinate alfalfa, will carry pollen from genetically altered Monsanto crops to their conventional cousin, contaminating heirloom crops and destroying farmers' ability to grow plants free from bioengineering. They argue that the USDA should devise regulations to force GE alfalfa farmers to create "buffer zones" between themselves and traditional growers to help prevent irreparable harm to the traditional alfalfa gene pool.