Lawsuit Aims To Halt Genetically Engineered Crops On Midwest Refuges
Press release, November 2 2011
*Public Interest Organizations Challenge Blanket Approval of Pesticide-Promoting
Crops on 54 Refuges Across 8 States
*Latest Case In Successful Series
A lawsuit filed today in federal court against the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
(FWS) seeks to end cultivation of genetically engineered (GE) crops on
fifty-four national wildlife refuges across the Midwest. The suit marks the
latest in a series of successful lawsuits by public interest organizations to
stop the planting of GE crops on national wildlife refuges.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the Center for
Food Safety (CFS), Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), and
Beyond Pesticides, this federal lawsuit charges that the Fish & Wildlife Service
unlawfully entered into cooperative farming agreements and approved planting of
GE crops in eight Midwestern states (IL, IA, IN, MI, MN, MO, OH, and WI) without
the
environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy Act and in
violation of the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act and FWS's
own policy.
This is the fourth lawsuit filed by CFS and PEER challenging FWS's practice of
permitting GE crops on wildlife refuges. Previously, the two groups
successfully
challenged approval of GE plantings on two wildlife refuges in Delaware, which
forced FWS to end GE planting in the entire 12-state Northeastern Region.
Earlier this year, CFS, PEER and Beyond Pesticides filed suit to block planting
GE crops on twenty-five refuges across eight states in the Southeast.
"National Wildlife Refuges are sanctuaries for migratory birds, native grasses,
and endangered species," said Paige Tomaselli, CFS staff attorney. "Allowing
pesticide promoting, GE crops degrades these vital ecosystems and is
antithetical to the basic purpose of our refuge system. Worse still is approval
without meaningful review of these crops' impacts."
FWS has allowed farming on Refuge lands for decades despite farming's
interference with protection of wildlife, native grasses, and biodiversity. In
recent years, refuges have converted to GE crops because the agency claims GE
seed is the only seed farmers can obtain. These GE crops are mostly engineered
for a single purpose: to be resistant to herbicides, principally Monsanto's
ubiquitous Roundup. Their planting leads to more frequent applications and
increased amounts of toxic herbicides flowing into natural environments. This
overreliance on herbicides has also fostered
an epidemic of "superweeds" in the past decade as weeds have mutated to resist
Roundup, similar to antibiotic resistance. Farming of GE crops has also led to
the uncontrolled spread of the transgenic DNA to conventional, organic crops,
and wild relatives.
"We are disappointed that the Fish & Wildlife Service refuses to follow its own
Biological Integrity policy forbidding GE crops unless their use is essential to
accomplishing a refuge purpose, which, of course, it never is, " stated PEER
Counsel Kathryn Douglas, who has also filed cases under the Freedom of
Information Act seeking detailed information about the Obama "White House
Agricultural Biotechnology Working Group" which is working to promote planting
GE crops on National Wildlife Refuges. "Wildlife refuges should be the last
place for playing out
corporate-political agendas."
If successful, the lawsuit will halt the cultivation of GE crops in the Midwest
Region until and unless a new approval is made based on a rigorous review of all
potential impacts and consistency with the refuge's purposes. Unless this
practice and FWS policy change, PEER and CFS have pledged to continue
challenging the legality of GE crop cultivation on refuges across the country.
###
Read the complaint
http://peer.org/docs/nwr/11_2_11_Midwest_Refuge_GE_Complaint.pdf
View the affected Midwest refuges
http://peer.org/docs/nwr/11_2_11_Midwest_refuge_list.pdf
Look at the lawsuit ending GE planting in
Northeastern refuges
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1443
See the attempt to uncover the White
House-Monsanto partnership
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1501
|
| The Genetic Engineering Blog is produced by Thomas Wittman and EcoFarm,
and supported by a generous donation from the Newman's Own Foundation. |
