OCA Editors’ Note: OCA applauds our ally the Center for Food Safety for this watershed moment in their efforts to bring GMOs under the rule of law. The victory breathes new life into our consumer campaigns for marketplace rejection of food brands that have indicated they would use GMO sugar. TAKE ACTION: Write to American Crystal Sugar President David Berg who believes consumers acceptance of GMO sugar be “a big nonevent.” Tell him you’re joining the boycott of foods with non-organic sugar.SAN FRANCISCO — The government illegally approved a genetically
modified, herbicide-resistant strain of sugar beets without adequately
considering the chance they will contaminate other beet crops, a
federal judge in San Francisco has ruled.

The
ruling by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White rejected the U.S.
Department of Agriculture’s decision in 2005 to allow Monsanto Co. to
sell the sugar beets, known as “Roundup-Ready” because they are
engineered to coexist with Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.

Sugar
beets produce 30 percent of the world’s sugar and, according to
consumer groups, half the granulated sugar in the United States. This
year’s planting, centered in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, is the first
to include a full crop of the Monsanto product.

White said the
USDA, in concluding that the new crop would have no significant
environmental effects, discounted the likelihood that wind-borne pollen
would spread to fields where conventional sugar beets, table beets and
the beet variety known as Swiss chard are grown.

Planting
genetically modified sugar beets has a “significant effect” on the
environment, White said in his ruling Monday, because of “the potential
elimination of a farmer’s choice to grow non-genetically engineered
crops, or a consumer’s choice to eat non-genetically engineered food.”

He said the department must prepare an environmental impact statement, which would include public input.

White
did not immediately prohibit distribution of the genetically modified
sugar beets, but a lawyer for plaintiffs in the case said they would
ask the judge for an injunction against sales until the review was
completed.

The ruling “sends a very clear message to the USDA to
protect American farmers and consumers and not the interests of
Monsanto,” said Kevin Golden, a San Francisco attorney for the
nonprofit Center for Food Safety, which opposes genetically modified
foods and supports organic farming.

Golden said the ruling could
also affect herbicide use, because the Environmental Protection Agency
has allowed more herbicide spraying in areas where the resistant crops
are grown.

Representatives of the Agriculture Department and
Monsanto were unavailable for comment. Luther Markwart, spokesman for
the 10,000-member American Sugar Beet Growers Association, said the
group is “looking forward to aggressively advocating” for farmers who
want to use the altered beets.

The ruling followed a similar
decision in 2007 by another federal judge in San Francisco, Charles
Breyer, to halt the nationwide planting of Monsanto’s genetically
engineered strain of alfalfa until the USDA conducted an environmental
study. A federal appeals court upheld Breyer’s decision last year.

The
department’s 2005 decision on sugar beets acknowledged that pollen from
the genetically modified crop could spread to other beet crops. But the
USDA said farmers would not be harmed because they would still be able
to buy non-genetically modified seeds.

White, however, cited
studies that said winds can carry sugar beet pollen at least 2 1/2
miles, much farther than the voluntary buffer zones between beet crops
recommended by Oregon agriculture officials.

He said the
department had failed to consider the economic effects of its decision
and had provided no evidence for its conclusion that non-genetically
modified sugar beets would remain available to farmers.