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At the end of January, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) unit of the US Department of Agriculture announced that it would fully deregulate the planting of GE alfalfa, despite its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) conclusion that such a course of action might lead to genetic contamination. To many observers, this appears to be in direct contravention to its obligations under law and court decisions.

In response to a law suit brought by the Center for Food Safety, a 2007 trial judge found that the Department had not done a proper EIS; included was a finding that alfalfa farmers had established a reasonable probability that their conventional alfalfa crops would be contaminated with the engineered Roundup Ready gene  if USDA were allowed to fully de-regulate GE alfalfa. The decision recognized that the substantial risk of such contamination was damage which would support a legal action, and the judge issued an order prohibiting the planting or deregulation of genetically engineered alfalfa. It directed the USDA to do a complete EIS and to adopt a course of action which would minimize injuries. The Supreme Court in 2010 overturned the planting ban, but did not restore the Department’s approval of GE alfalfa; thus, planting was still not legally allowable.

Congress held two hearings in 2010, in which the agency was criticized for these failures, and over 200,000 citizen comments were filed, mostly objecting to the Department’s plans.

The Department’s final environmental review, issued on Dec. 23, 2010, again concludes, in effect, that there will be no substantial harm from biotech alfalfa!  As a part of this environmental impact analysis, USDA proposed three options for action: 1) No deregulation of GE alfalfa; 2) complete deregulation of GE alfalfa; or 3) partial deregulation of alfalfa with certain government mandated measures to segregate GE production from organic production.  Under NEPA the public is granted a 30-day period of public review, which ended in late January. It was clear that the Department would reject option (1), since no GE crops have been subjected to regulation.