According to a news source, Monsanto has filed a lawsuit challenging the German government’s decision to prohibit farmers from planting the company’s genetically modified (GM) corn. Designed to produce a substance toxic to the corn borer pest, the GM seed has been permitted in Germany since 2005, and the corn has been used in Europe for animal feed since 1998. Earlier in April 2009, Germany’s agriculture minister, saying she had “legitimate reasons” to believe the corn is an environmental hazard, put a halt to plans to use the GM seed on nearly 9,000 acres in eastern states this year. Monsanto contends that the ban is arbitrary and could only be imposed as to approved plants if new scientific evidence comes to light. Other European countries have banned the GM seed, although the European Food Safety Authority concluded that studies surfacing in 2008 did “not present new scientific evidence that would…
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A federal court in Missouri has determined that Texas plaintiffs alleging injury from the contamination of conventional rice crops with genetically modified (GM) rice had no reasonable basis to join non-diverse defendants and thus denied their motion to remand to state court. In re Genetically Modified Rice Litig., MDL No. 1811 (E.D. Mo., decided March 24, 2009). The 34 cases at issue were transferred from Texas to the Missouri court along with some 200 others from four other states as part of a multidistrict litigation proceeding. Rice farmers allege that the GM rice contamination adversely affected the global market for their products. The Texas plaintiffs sued the GM seed rice company and its affiliates, citizens of states other than Texas, and also sued a Texas rice grower and his affiliated companies alleging that he negligently grew the GM rice and contaminated neighboring fields or sold them GM seed rice. Plaintiffs…
The European Commission’s (EC’s) Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health reportedly deadlocked on February 16, 2009, over whether France and Greece should be forced to lift their bans on a genetically modified (GM) corn seed that is the only one approved for planting in the European Union. According to a biotechnology industry spokesperson, the increase in votes favoring the cultivation of GM crops signals a new momentum in Europe to open markets to these controversial crops. EU environmentalists and consumers have long opposed their introduction, citing environmental risks and the unwelcome intrusion of large corporate interests into agriculture. A larger vote next week may, say biotech industry executives, lead to the approval of two additional GM corn seeds for marketing in the EU. Mike Hall, a spokesperson for the developer of one of them, has reportedly indicated that the company is waiting to see if the EU…
Researchers at the University of Hawaii have tested 160 fast-food products purchased from outlets throughout the United States and reportedly found that “not 1 item could be traced back to a noncorn source.” A. Hope Jahren & Rebecca A. Kraft, “Carbon and Nitrogen Stable Isotopes in Fast Food: Signatures of Corn and Confinement,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, November 18, 2008. According to the researchers, “Ingredients matter for many reasons: U.S. corn agriculture has been criticized as environmentally unsustainable and conspicuously subsidized.” Sampling the ratios of different isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in the meat and chicken samples tested, the researchers were able to determine what the animals were fed and the level of fertilizer used on the feed crops. They also found that higher levels of nitrogen isotope in the meat, from the ammonia emitted in their manure, could be linked to meat coming from animals raised in confined conditions.
