GREENPEACE: Legal action filed against U.S. EPA ...
OTC 22.09.97 20:30
SEP 22, 1997, M2 Communications - 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 Procedure 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.
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