In a precedential victory for food and environmental safety, a federal district court ruled this week that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) must be regulated. The Court’s ruling overturns the 2020 rule overhaul that had eliminated most government oversight over GMO crops, trees, and grasses.
“This is a critical victory on behalf of farmers, the planet, and scientific integrity,” said George Kimbrell, legal director for the lead plaintiff Center for Food Safety, and counsel in the case. “USDA tried to hand over its job to Monsanto and the pesticide industry and the Court held that capitulation contrary to both law and science.”
The ruling is a rebuke of U.S. government efforts to practically eliminate oversight of novel GMO technology and instead let industry self-regulate. Previously, nearly all GMO plants went through agency approval before experimental planting and again before any commercial use. Center for Food Safety and allies sued USDA in 2021 to reverse this rollback, arguing that the rule change violated numerous environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Plant Protection Act. Today, the Court held that the regulations violate the Plant Protection Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.
The Court’s decision sharply criticized the defendant federal agency for its abrupt reversal after more than a decade of recognizing the harms of novel GMO technology. The Court at various points held the agency decision was in “direct conflict with the conclusion of its own experts,” and was based on “perception and beliefs” that are merely “asserted as fiat untethered to a clear and sound analysis.” Despite USDA’s repeated admissions of the need for stronger—not lesser—regulations, the rule unlawfully ignored these concerns of GMO crops’ risks.
As such, the Court found that the rule did not address “a single one of these issues” that the agency itself previously raised. The Court also found that the exemption of GMO crops was “repudiated” by the “scientific evidence in the record,” specifically the conclusions and recommendations from the National Academies of Science. Finally, concluding that the agency’s errors were “significant,” the Court struck down the rules based on those violations alone, determining it unnecessary to yet reach the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act claims.
The plaintiffs in the case are the National Family Farm Coalition, Friends of the Earth, Pesticide Action Network, Center for Environmental Health, Center for Biological Diversity, and Center for Food Safety, all represented by counsel from the Center for Food Safety.
Additional Background
Now in commercial production for several decades, GMO crop systems are well known to cause several significant agricultural and environmental harms. Such harms include organic and conventional crop contamination from GMO crops and market closures, significant increase in pesticide use, and the proliferation of pesticide-resistant “superweeds.” Because the vast majority of GMOs are engineered to be resistant to weed-killing pesticides, they have dramatically increased the amount of these chemicals sprayed in U.S. agriculture.
These GMO herbicide-resistant crop systems have triggered an epidemic of herbicide-immune weeds, which now infest 120 million acres, leading to a toxic spiral of weeds immune to ever more herbicides, and increased spraying of toxic chemical cocktails to kill them. Genetically engineered crops, including rice to alfalfa to corn and many others, have caused farmers billions of dollars in market losses from transgenic contamination of conventional or organic crops, as food companies and foreign markets reject tainted supplies.
USDA has repeatedly acknowledged the need for stronger GE crop regulations since 2000, when Congress enacted the Plant Protection Act, giving the agency broad new authority to prevent agricultural, economic, and environmental harms. After several false starts to implement this new authority beginning in 2004, nearly a decade-and-a-half later, in 2020, the USDA—under the prior Trump administration— reversed course and dramatically weakened its oversight of GE organisms. Instead of strengthening rules that were already anemic, the 2020 revisions either exempts most GMO crops from any regulation or subjects them to cursory reviews that sidestep serious analysis of their actual harms.
Statements from Other Plaintiffs on the Decision
“A growing body of science shows that GE crops dramatically escalate toxic herbicide use, causing harm to farmers, rural communities, and biodiversity. USDA needs to urgently prioritize a high standard of oversight for GE organisms to evaluate real risks for people and the environment,” said Dana Perls, program manager of Food and Technology at Friends of the Earth, a plaintiff in this case.
“For the past few decades, America’s family farms have struggled under the control of the corporate agrochemical industry, making it nearly impossible for farmers to find anything other than patented-GE seed and pesticide technologies,” said Jim Goodman, Board President of plaintiff National Family Farm Coalition, a plaintiff in the case. “Today’s Court decision is a victory for family farms, consumers, and the environment. If the agrochemical industry is allowed to determine the approval of their patented products, farmers will have no measure of fairness in the seed market.”
“This victory is an important step in making sure the GE crops triggering escalating use of harmful pesticides across millions of acres are actually regulated,” said Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity, a plaintiff in the case. “We know GE crops engineered to withstand what would otherwise be a fatal dousing of pesticides are playing a major role in driving endangered species like rusty patched bumblebees toward extinction. The extensive harm to wildlife and plants caused by these poisons must be properly studied so we can get adequate protections in place before it’s too late.”
“Farmers do not want their farming choices to be limited to the reliance on an ever increasing volume of chemical applications onto crops that corporations have engineered precisely for the purpose of locking in the sale of their patented seeds and proprietary pesticides,” said Rob Faux, Iowa Farmer and Communications Manager at Pesticide Action & Agroecology Network (PAN) and a plaintiff in the case. “This ruling restores the basic oversight necessary to protect our water, soil, air, and communities from the corporate-driven cycle of pesticide dependence, weed resistance, pest resurgence, and reliance on ever more hazardous pesticides. That failed corporate model traps farmers on a treadmill that is catastrophic for biodiversity and human health, and it’s high time we got off it.”
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