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| Congressman Jack Kingston, Georgia, Chairman of the House Agriculture Appropriations Committee poses questions before the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, March 6, 2012. Kingston was voted "legislator of the year for 2011-2012" by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include Monsanto and DuPont. (Photo: Bob Nichols / USDAgov) |
By Alexis Baden-Mayer, AlterNet |
News Analysis
While many Americans were firing up barbecues
and breaking out the sparklers to celebrate Independence Day, biotech industry
executives were more likely chilling champagne to celebrate another kind of
independence: immunity from federal law.
A so-called "Monsanto rider,"
quietly slipped into the multi-billion dollar FY 2013 Agricultural
Appropriations bill, would require – not just allow, but require - the
Secretary of Agriculture to grant a temporary permit for the planting or
cultivation of a genetically engineered crop, even if a federal court has
ordered the planting be halted until an Environmental Impact Statement is
completed. All the farmer or the biotech producer has to do is ask, and the
questionable crops could be released into the environment where they could
potentially contaminate conventional or organic crops and, ultimately, the
nation's food supply.
Unless the Senate or a citizen's army of
farmers and consumers can stop them, the House of Representatives is likely to
ram this dangerous rider through any day now.
In a statement issued last month, the Center
For Food Safety had this to say about the biotech industry's latest
attempt to circumvent legal and regulatory safeguards:
Ceding broad and unprecedented powers to
industry, the rider poses a direct threat to the authority of U.S. courts,
jettisons the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) established oversight
powers on key agriculture issues and puts the nation's farmers and food supply
at risk.
In other words, if this single line in the
90-page Agricultural Appropriations bill slips through, it's Independence Day
for the biotech industry.
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) has sponsored an
amendment to kill the rider, whose official name is "the farmers
assurance" provision. But even if DeFazio's amendment makes it through the
House vote, it still has to survive the Senate. Meanwhile, organizations like
the Organic Consumers Association, Center for Food Safety, FoodDemocracyNow!,
the Alliance for Natural Health USA and many others are gathering
hundreds of thousands of signatures in protest of the rider, and in support of
DeFazio's amendment.
Will Congress do the right thing and keep
what are arguably already-weak safeguards in place, to protect farmers and the
environment? Or will industry win yet another fight in the battle to exert
total control over our farms and food supply?
Biotech's 'Legislator of the Year' behind the
latest sneak attack
Whom do we have to thank for this sneak
attack on USDA safeguards? The agricultural sub-committee chair Jack Kingston
(R-Ga.) – who not coincidentally was voted "legislator of the year for
2011-2012" by none other than the Biotechnology Industry Organization,
whose members include Monsanto and DuPont. As reported by Mother Jones, the
Biotechnology Industry Organization declared Kingston a "champion of
America's biotechnology industry" who has "helped to protect funding
for programs essential to the survival of biotechnology companies across the
United States."
Kingston clearly isn't interested in the
survival of America's farmers.
Aiding and abetting Kingston is John C.
Greenwood, former US Congressman from Pennsylvania and now president of the
Biotechnology Industry Organization. No stranger to the inner workings of
Congress, Greenwood lobbied for the "farmers assurance provision" in
a June 13 letter to Congress, according to Mother Jones and Bloomberg, claiming
that "a stream of lawsuits" have slowed approvals and "created
uncertainties" for companies developing GE crops.
Greenwood was no doubt referring to several
past lawsuits, including one brought in 2007 by the Center for Food safety
challenging the legality of the USDA's approval of Monsanto's Roundup Ready
alfalfa. In that case, a federal court ruled that the USDA's approval of GMO 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 Roundup. The USDA was forced
to undertake a four-year study of GMO alfalfa's impacts under the National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). During the four-year study, farmers were
banned from planting or selling the crop – creating that 'uncertainty"
that Greenwood is so worried about.
The USDA study slowed down the release of GMO
alfalfa, but ultimately couldn't stop it. As Mother Jones reports, in
2011, the USDA deregulated the crop, even though according to its own study, the USDA said that "gene flow"
between GM and non-GM alfalfa is "probable," and threatens organic
dairy producers and other users of non-GMO alfalfa, and that there is strong
potential for the creation of Roundup-resistant "superweeds" that
require ever-higher doses of Roundup and application of ever-more toxic
herbicides. The report noted that two million acres of US farmland already harbor
Roundup-resistant weeds caused by other Roundup Ready crops.
In another case – which perhaps paved the way
for this latest provision now before the House - the USDA in 2011 outright
defied a federal judge's order to halt the planting of Monsanto's controversial
Roundup-Ready GMO sugar beets until it completed an Environmental Impact
Statement. The USDA allowed farmers to continue planting the crop even while it
was being assessed for safety on the grounds that there were no longer enough
non-GMO seeds available to plant.
Who loses if Monsanto wins this one?
Among the biggest losers if Congress ignores
the DeFazio amendment and passes the "farmers assurance provision"
are thousands of farmers of conventional and organic crops, including those who
rely on the export market for their livelihoods. An increasing number of global
markets are requiring GMO-free agricultural products or, at the very least,
enforcing strict GMO labeling laws. If this provision passes, it will allow
unrestricted planting of potentially dangerous crops, exposing other safe and
non-GMO crops to risk of contamination.
As we've seen in the past, farmers who grow
crops that have been inadequately tested and later found dangerous, or whose
safe crops become contaminated by nearby unsafe crops, risk huge losses and
potentially, lawsuits from their customers. Ultimately, the entire US
agriculture market and US economy suffers.
We have only to look back to the StarLink
corn and LibertyLink rice contamination episodes for evidence of how misguided
this provision is. In October 2000, traces of an Aventis GM corn called
StarLink showed up in taco shells in the U.S. even though the corn had not been
approved for human consumption because leading allergists were concerned it
would cause food allergies. The contamination led to a massive billion dollar
recall of over 300 food brands. The 'StarLink' gene also turned up unexpectedly
in a second company's corn and in US corn exports, causing a costly
disruption to the nation's grain-handling system, and spurring lawsuits by
farmers whose crops were damaged.
A similar disaster occurred for US rice
farmers in 2006. In august of that year the USDA announced that mutant DNA
of Liberty Link, a genetically modified variety of rice developed by Bayer
CropScience, a then-German agri-business giant, were found in
commercially-grown long-grain rice in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas
and Missouri. LibertyLink rice, named for Bayer's broad-spectrum herbicide
glufosinate-ammonium, was never intended for human consumption. Following the
announcement of contamination, Japan banned all long-grain rice imports from
the U.S., and U.S. trade with the EU and other countries ground to a halt. Rice
farmers and cooperatives were forced to engage in five long years of
litigation against Bayer
CropScience in an attempt to recoup some of
their losses.
All the other ways this provision is just
plain bad
There's a reason we have laws like the National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and thePlant Protection Act of 2000, which
was specifically designed "to strengthen the safety net for agricultural
producers by providing greater access to more affordable risk management tools
and improved protection from production and income loss . . .". The
'farmers assurance provision" is a thinly disguised attempt by the biotech
industry to undermine these protections. Worse yet, it's an affront to everyone
who believes the US judicial system exists to protect US citizens and public
health.
Why should you be outraged about this
provision? For all these reasons:
· The Monsanto Rider is an unconstitutional
violation of the separation of powers.Judicial review is an essential element
of U.S. law, providing a critical and impartial check on government decisions
that may negatively impact human health, the environment or livelihoods.
Maintaining the clear-cut boundary of a Constitutionally-guaranteed separation
of powers is essential to our government. This provision will blur that line.
· Judicial review is a gateway, not a
roadblock. Congress should be fully supportive of our nation's independent
judiciary. The ability of courts to review, evaluate and judge an issue that
impacts public and environmental health is a strength, not a weakness, of our
system. The loss of this fundamental safeguard could leave public health, the
environment and livelihoods at risk.
· It removes the "legal brakes"
that prevent fraud and abuse. In recent years, federal courts have ruled
that several USDA GE crop approvals violated the law and required further study
of their health and environmental impact. These judgments indicated that
continued planting would cause harm to the environment and/or farmers and
ordered interim planting restrictions pending further USDA analysis and
consideration. The Monsanto rider would prevent a federal court from putting in
place court-ordered restrictions, even if the approval were fraudulent or
involved bribery.
· It's unnecessary and duplicative. Every
court dealing with these issues is supposed to carefully weigh the interests of
all affected farmers and consumers, as is already required by law. No farmer
has ever had his or her crops destroyed as a result. USDA already has working
mechanisms in place to allow partial approvals, and the Department has used
them, making this provision completely unnecessary.
· It shuts out the USDA. The rider would
not merely allow, it would compel the Secretary of Agriculture to immediately
grant any requests for permits to allow continued planting and
commercialization of an unlawfully approved GE crop. With this provision in
place, USDA may not be able to prevent costly contamination episodes like
Starlink or Liberty Link rice, which have already cost farmers hundreds of
millions of dollars in losses. The rider would also make a mockery of USDA's
legally mandated review, transforming it into a 'rubber stamp' approval
process.
· It's a back-door amendment of a statute. This
rider, quietly tacked onto an appropriations bill, is in effect a substantial
amendment to USDA's governing statute for GE crops, the Plant Protection Act.
If Congress feels the law needs to be changed, it should be done in a
transparent manner by holding hearings, soliciting expert testimony and
including full opportunity for public debate.
If we allow this "Monsanto Rider"
to be slipped into the FY 2013 Agricultural Appropriations bill, consumers and
farmers will lose what little control we have now over what we plant and what
we eat.
If you would like to join the hundreds of
thousands of concerned citizens who have already written to Congress in support
of the DeFazio amendment, please sign our petition here.
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