Jan Shepel
Associate Editor
WASHINGTON
A three-year court case dealing with genetically modified alfalfa is going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court where justices will decide whether a lower court acted incorrectly in halting the marketing, sale and cultivation of a genetically modified alfalfa plant that is resistant to the herbicide glyphosate – Roundup.
The case marks the first time the U.S. Supreme Court has taken a case dealing with genetically engineered crops. There are more than 10,000 cases appealed to the high court each year, but the justices agree to review only about 1 percent of that number.
On Monday (March 8) a coalition of farm groups filed a friend-of-the-court brief to the high court in support of the petitioners from Monsanto Co. versus Geertson Seed Farms.
The brief, from the American Farm Bureau Federation, Biotechnology Industry Organization, American Seed Trade Association, American Soybean Association, National Alfalfa and Forage Alliance, National Association of Wheat Growers, National Cotton Council and National Potato Council, urged the justices to overturn the lower court injunction that banned the use of the genetically modified alfalfa.
They stated that the lower court decision came without hearing key evidence and should be reversed to protect farmers who choose to grow genetically engineered crops, as well as the public benefits that agricultural biotechnology brings to producers and consumers around the world.
In the original case, brought in 2007, environmental groups, seed farmers and individual organic farmers argued that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s decision to deregulate the glyphosate-tolerant alfalfa violated the National Environmental Policy Act.
The 9th Circuit Court in California ruled that the USDA should have done an environmental impact statement before it decided to deregulate, and the court ultimately granted an injunction, prohibiting nearly all planting and sale of the genetically-modified alfalfa pending the issuance of the EIS.
In their brief this week, the farm groups argued that the lower court’s ruling failed to consider the public benefits of agricultural biotechnology, which already is adopted widely in the U.S. for a number of key crops such as corn, soybeans, cotton, sugar beets and papaya.
Going back to 2005, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service concluded that there was no significant impact on the human environment related to the herbicide-tolerate alfalfa.
But the deregulation was challenged in court by organic farmers and those producing non-genetically modified seed, and the court ruled that there was a realistic potential for contamination and that APHIS hadn’t looked enough at the extent of this potential.
The court also ruled that the agency hadn’t paid enough attention to the harm that could be caused to organic farmers and hadn’t investigated the development of glyphosate-resistant weeds. The court ordered APHIS to prepare an EIS and in May 2007 banned any future planting of the genetically modified alfalfa. A month later the court further required disclosure of all sites where the crop was already being grown.
In 2008 the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, with one judge dissenting, affirmed the district court’s injunction against any further planting of the crop, pending completion of the EIS.
In the wake of the lower court’s ruling, APHIS completed a 1,400-page document as its draft EIS, and again has recommended that the alfalfa be deregulated and that farmers be allowed to grow it.
During that time the USDA, Monsanto and Forage Genetics appealed, arguing that the injunction was overly broad and the district court failed to hold an evidentiary hearing prior to the injunction order.
The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Jan. 15 that it will grant Monsanto’s request for review of the injunction that halted the planting and sale of the alfalfa seed.
Oral arguments on the case are scheduled for April 27. Though there is no set time deadline, a decision is expected from the Court by June.
