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Judge Rejects Approval of Engineered Sugar Beets
countertrolling writes "A federal judge has ruled that the government failed to adequately assess the environmental impacts of genetically engineered sugar beets before approving the crop for cultivation in the United States. The decision could lead to a ban on the planting of the beets, which have been widely adopted by farmers. Beets supply about half the nation's sugar, with the rest coming from sugar cane. The Agriculture Department did conduct an environmental assessment before approving the genetically engineered beets in 2005 for widespread planting. But the department concluded there would be no significant impact, so a fuller environmental impact statement was not needed. But Judge White said that the pollen from the genetically engineered crops might spread to non-engineered beets. He said that the 'potential elimination of farmer's choice to grow non-genetically engineered crops, or a consumer's choice to eat non-genetically engineered food' constituted a significant effect on the environment that necessitated an environmental impact statement. There's still hope, isn't there? That we can at least get this stuff labeled properly?"
I was disappointed this judge wasn't saying a few things in some of the Mosanto lawsuits (you know, plant a field of genetically modified corn of some sort, sue the farmer next door for patent infringement when his stuff gets pollinated from it, win...)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
If you actually knew what Monsanto has been doing in the legal arena, you'd know that you don't have to be a botanist to smell a fish.... Read the rest of the posts and do some research about Monsanto's litigation history.
> apparently some layman judge type just wants to make noise.
Perhaps he is instead more familiar than you with Monsanto's legal history?
> I can almost guarantee this case will change nothing and do nothing but waste
> the time of quite a few attorneys.
You might be right about that, except the part where you forgot about Monsanto pouring enormous $$$'s into those lawyers' pockets to try to get this precedent overturned, erased, or forgotten. I'm sure those lawyers don't view it as a "waste of time".