Center for Food Safety Criticizes USDA BioAg Committee’s Coexistence Stance
The Center for Food Safety has issued a paper critical of the draft report
prepared by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Advisory
Committee on Biotechnology and 21st Century Agriculture (AC21), which
was scheduled to meet August 27-28, 2012, to discuss the draft. According
to the advocacy organization, USDA “has increasingly strayed from its role as ‘enhanc[er of] economic opportunities for US farmers and ranchers,’ by
continuing to allow genetically engineered (GE) seeds, pollen, and plants to
contaminate our nation’s farms without restraint.” In particular, the center calls
AC21’s “co-existence” approach to organic, conventional and GE farming “a
thinly veiled attempt to sanction allowable amounts of GE contamination in
food by establishing a universal GE contamination threshold.”
The paper contends that compensating conventional and organic farmers
whose crops are contaminated by drifting GE pollen will not address the
losses sustained when other countries ban all U.S. seed and crop imports.
“Even if farmers strictly adhere to crop management protocols such as those
required in the organic standards,” the center contends, “GE contaminated
crops cannot be sold in countries that prohibit GE food.” According to the
center, USDA’s “policy and practice of permitting the unrestricted use of GE
technologies cuts off valuable export markets and facilitates the dominance
of GE above all other forms of agriculture, particularly in the face of transgenic
contamination.” The center calls on USDA to immediately establish
a moratorium on the planting of GE crops and also notes its opposition to
any compensation mechanism requiring “conventional non-GE growers
to purchase insurance or pay into a fund to compensate themselves for
unwanted GE contamination.”
The paper cites the StarLink® corn and LibertyLink® rice contamination
episodes as examples of costly incidents involving massive product recalls,
import bans and federal lawsuits.
