Thursday, March 4, 2010

Sugar beets: You be the judge

We have a story in today's paper about the ongoing Roundup Ready sugar beet lawsuit.

To summarize in less than the 40+ inches I took up in the print edition: the groups opposed to the genetically-modified beet plants are seeking a preliminary injunction that would stop the planting and use of Roundup Ready beets (and the sugar derived from them) at least until the U.S. Department of Agriculture has, as ordered by federal Judge Jeffrey White, put together an Environmental Impact Statement re-assessing the impacts of the crop.
Sugar beet pile west of PowellHarvested sugar beets pile up just west of Powell in this October '09 photo by Kara Bacon

A hearing on the injunction request is slated for tomorrow (Friday) and it's in California, making it tough for folks like you and I to sit in. But if you'd like to read through the arguments likely to be made in the courtroom, and have some time for some not-so-light reading, well, ta-da!
  1. Opposition groups request a preliminary injunction
  2. Intervenors (the sugarbeet industry and Monsanto) voice their opposition
  3. The US government voices similar opposition
  4. The opposition groups defend their injunction request

As I understand it, those four documents (about 120 pages worth) pretty much lay out what everybody's arguing over, though, of course, there are hundreds of pages of more stuff and other issues, too.

I'm wondering, what do you think about the case? Weigh in down in the comments section below.
Posted by CJ at 3/04/2010 12:07:00 PM

4 comments:

  1. i guess i have a question or two....
    since beets as a rule only flower on the second year, is it out of the question for these organic growers who fear cross pollination to get together with the round up ready boys and take turns raising seed. sort of i get odd years, you get even years, this would sure save the taxpayers a lot of money in frivoloss lawsuit money.
    my other thought is has the sierra club taken into account the volume of other geneticly altered food sources that have been developed throuout history not only by selective breeding or pollination techniques but in the lab as well that have sustained this nation with no ill effects ??. ok, so your ear of corn has been engineered to be larger and better tasting vs what grandpa raised in his day, that does not make it "unorganic" unless to throw fertilizer or bug spray to it after it sprouts, at that point you have changed the scinareo.
    seems they are trying to argue both sides of the equasion to simply hold on to a nitch market at the expense of a whole industry. I think with a little coperation from both sides they could both survive just fine, but i suspect the lawyers wont let that happen.
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  2. What gets me, is that the litigants are being totally malicious in pursuing the injunction when the judge was slated to hear the second phase of the case later this summer anyway. The issue of pollen drift is irrelevant because the seed has already been raised for this year, and the issue of pollen drift was the only one ruled on in the initial phase of the suit.
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  3. I'm wondering if anyone has done a study on the HEALTH and nutritional value of these "genetically altered foods"? - and are they aware that EMPLOYEES of Monsanto and other companies that produce the seeds for the altered foods AVOID eating them???
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  4. There is no difference between the sugars produced from roundup ready beets and organic beets. Most people in US already consuming sugar and other products which were grown using RR ready seeds and that includes Monsanto employees.
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