US: Judge issues no decision on GMO beet seed injunction
Published: 03/08/2010, 9:01:28 AM
US District Court Judge Jeffrey White issued no decision Friday after a hearing on a petition for a preliminary injunction to stop farmers from planting genetically modified sugarbeet seeds, according to Dow Jones.
George Kimbrell, senior staff attorney for the consumer watchdog group Center for Food Safety, said Friday that the judge said he was still "considering the arguments presented by both sides" and he would issue a decision at a later date.
The Center for Food Safety is one of the plaintiffs trying to stop the planting this year of the biotech seeds on the grounds that the US Department of Agriculture did not do a thorough enough assessment on the risk to the environment.
The group argued Friday at the US District Court, Northern District of California, that genetic material from biotech sugarbeets will contaminate other non-biotech crops.
Representatives of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association, one of the defendants in the case, could not be reached for immediate comment Friday.
In a Feb. 19 interview, though, Luther Markwart, executive vice president of the sugar beet group, said farmers would not be able to plant non-biotech seeds this year even if they wanted to.
"There's not enough conventional seed to produce a crop this year," Markwart said.
US farmers produced about 4.4 million short tons of sugar from the sugarbeets planted last year on about 1 million acres in 11 states, according to USDA data. And 95% of the 2009 sugar beet crop was produced with genetically modified seeds, Markwart said.
But the plaintiffs told Judge White Friday that they believed the claim that farmers didn't have access to non-biotech seeds was false, according the Center for Food Safety's motion for a preliminary injunction.
Kimbell said Friday he expects Judge White to issue a ruling on a preliminary injunction soon because March is when farmers traditionally start planting sugarbeet crops. He added that the judge instructed plaintiffs and defendants to continue working on briefs to argue over a possible permanent injunction.