Biotech alfalfa critics lose challenge

Despite their best efforts to prove that Roundup Ready alfalfa will be detrimental to the environment and that USDA failed to properly evaluate the crop, anti-biotech groups failed to win their court challenge last week.

U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti rejected the critics’ challenge that USDA violated environmental laws by approving the planting of transgenic alfalfa. The complaint had also said the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service failed to properly analyze the potential for “super weeds,” which the critics claimed would develop and spread resistance to glyphosate herbicides to other unintended plants.

Capital Press reported, “In his Dec. 5 ruling, Conti repeatedly said that arguments opposing the crop’s commercialization were unpersuasive, ruling that APHIS took the required ‘hard look’ at transgenic alfalfa’s effects under federal environmental law.”

An attorney for the Center for Food Safety announced the group planned to challenge the latest ruling in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.