USDA to allow Monsanto to perform its own GMO studies

Last August, a federal judge admonished the USDA for approving genetically modified seeds without first doing the required environmental impact study. Now, the USDA has a solution–allow the biotech industry to conduct the studies itself. This means that Monsanto and other biotech companies will decide whether to approve their own products.

In the case brought last August by environmentalists and the Center for Food Safety, Federal Judge Jeffrey White ruled that the USDA violated the National Environmental Policy Act in deregulating Monsanto’s Roundup Ready sugar beet seeds in 2005 and banned planting of the crop until the environmental impact study was complete. The USDA ignored the ban, according to Popular Science (http://bit.ly/kc8H9M), and ignored White’s subsequent order to destroy the crops once they had been planted.