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[US] Greenpeace, others, File Legal Action Over GE Plants (fwd)
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Date: 97-09-18 07:49:52 EDT
GREENPEACE, FARMERS AND SCIENTISTS FILE LEGAL ACTION AGAINST USA EPA
OVER ITS APPROVAL OF GENETICALLY ENGINEERED PLANTS
Washington D.C., September 16, 1997 - The US Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) was charged with gross negligence over its approval of
genetically engineered plants in a petition filed today by a coalition of
environmental, farming and scientific organisations.
Greenpeace International, the International Federation of Organic
Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), the Sierra Club, the Centre for
International Technology Assessment in Washington, DC, the Institute for
Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minneapolis, the National
Coalition for Mis-use of Pesticide were among the 31 groups which filed a
formal legal petition to the EPA.
This is the first step according to US law in filing litigation against a
US government agency in the Federal Court. Petitioners demand that the
EPA withdraw the approval of transgenic plants carrying the genetic code
from a soil bacterium called Bacillus Thuringiensis and abstain from any
new registration of such plants.
The petitioners will take the EPA to the US Federal District Court if the
agency does not react to their legal petition within 90 days. "EPA's
approvals are in clear violation of Federal environmental and agricultural
and procedural laws," said International Center of Technology Assessment
attorney Andrew Kimbrell, "and no court in this country will let them get
away with that".
Petitioners allege that, in approving transgenic plants carrying the
Bacillus Thuringiensis (B.t.) toxin, the EPA is seriously threatening the
future of organic agriculture and jeopardizing the genetic variety of major
food crops, such as corn, potatoes and tomatoes.
Petitioners also charge that EPA's actions violate numerous federal laws
and regulations and will cause significant human health and environmental
problems (1).
Natural strains of B.t. have been used as a biological pesticide for nearly
forty years to protect crops, vegetables and forests without any known
detrimental effects on the environment or human health. B.t. sprays today
are the single most important bio-pesticide on the market
with an annual overturn of over 60 million dollars in the US alone. They
are especially important to organic farmers and integrated pest management
programs (IPM).
Genetic engineers have transferred parts of the B.t. gene into a variety of
plants such as corn, potato, rice, rapeseed, eggplant, grape, tomato,
cranberry, cotton, apple, poplar, walnut and tobacco. As these plants
permanently produce high doses of the B.t. toxin in all their cells, the
manipulation makes them highly pest-resistant. Major multinational chemical
and genetic engineering companies including Monsanto, Novartis, AgrEvo and
Pioneer have now started to commercialize such transgenic B.t.-plants.
Transgenic B.t.-cotton, -corn and -potatoes have been planted in the range
of 3 million acres (1,2 million hectares) in the US this year.
Large scale use of these transgenic B.t. plants is likely to create
resistance within the populations of the targetted insects and thus create
the need for new chemical or biotechnological pesticides - a well known
effect with many chemical insecticides. This short term strategy of the
agrochemical industry will also render the biological B.t. sprays useless
within a short time and leave organic farmers with no biological alternative.
"Chemical companies commercializing transgenic B.t. plants are waging an
undeclared war against sustainable farming practices," stated Benedikt
Haerlin, Greenpeace International's Coordinator on Genetic Engineering.
"Regulators around the world are well aware of this
problem, but have not dared to draw the necessary conclusions. Instead they
have agreed to the thoroughly inadequate voluntary "resistance management"
presented by the chemical industry."
In addition, scientific research on the environmental effects of transgenic
B.t. plants indicate that it may also make the plants toxic to non-target
organisms and to predators of the target-insects. This results from the
fact that the genetically engineered, truncated version of the B.t. toxins
will be less specific and the toxins will persist in the soil for longer
and in higher doses.
Finally the transfer of the engineered B.t. genes to wild relatives of the
transgenic plants through cross pollination can have unpredictable and
potentially environmentally-disastrous consequences, especially in the
countries where these species originate. It could result in the
irreversible reduction and genetic pollution of the environment.and of
someof the world's most important food crops.
Notes
1. The petition alleges breaches of the National Environmental Policy Act
where the EPA failed to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement which it
is required to do so ; the Administrative Proceedure Act where other
federal agencies and scientists should have been consulted but the EPA
failed to do so; and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act
(FIFRA) where it must be proved that plant pesticides will only be approved
if it can be determined they will not cause harm. The EPA's and Novartis's
own data admits to herbicide resistance becoming an issue.