USDA Approves Genetically Engineered Alfalfa—Now What?

Farmers, guard your crop fields — yet another Frankenfood is poised to take root.

Yesterday, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will fully deregulate genetically engineered (GE) alfalfa. Barring any intervention from President Obama, farmers will likely start planting Monsanto's Roundup Ready, GE alfalfa seeds this spring.

The move came despite very vocal protests from sustainable foodies and environmentalists, including more than 5,500 Change.org members, who petitioned Vilsack to deny approval of the Frankencrop. According to the Cornucopia Institute, a farmer advocacy non-profit, the USDA received more than 250,000 comments on the deregulation of GE alfalfa, the vast majority of which were opposed to the planting of this crop. Despite widespread opposition from the science community, environmentalists, foodies, and the public, Big Ag interests won out yet again. I guess we shouldn't be surprised — agrochemical companies like Monsanto have had the USDA in their pockets for years.

What's worse is that Vilsack chose to fully deregulate GE alfalfa, a plan that basically puts a no-holds-bar on the planting of the crop. Alfalfa was the first GE crop where the USDA proposed partial deregulation, a move that would have limited the crop's planting to non-seed-growing regions in order to prevent contamination of organic and conventional alfalfa. Even that compromise was a no-go, with Vilsack issuing a full deregulation yesterday.

Vilsack did throw sustainable foodies a measly, feeble little bone, saying that he would promote more research into ways to prevent contamination of organic and non-GE crops (a lot of good that will do after GE alfalfa is already planted). He added that the USDA would set up a second germ plasm/seed center in Idaho in order to maintain GE-free strains of alfalfa (a similar center currently resides in Washington state).

However, Vilsack's small concessions fail to protect the environment and the livelihoods of organic farmers. Monsanto bills Roundup Ready crops as eco-friendly because the crops themselves are resistant to the Roundup herbicide. Farmers can therefore spray the single herbicide all over their fields to kill off weeds while the alfalfa remains healthy, a move that supposedly decreases growers' use of chemical herbicides. But as we're seeing right now with Roundup Ready corn, cotton, and soybeans, weeds quickly evolve a resistance to the Roundup herbicide. Once that happens, farmers must rely on even more chemical herbicides to control these hungry weeds, causing polluted waterways, poisoned wildlife, and empty wallets for farmers.

GE alfalfa also threatens to destroy the livelihoods of organic alfalfa, meat, and dairy farmers. GE crops rarely stay within their designated areas — bees and other pollinators carry GE plants' pollen to other fields, spreading it to organic and non-GE crop varieties. Once these organic varieties carry altered genes, they can no longer be considered organic. This is a problem for organic alfalfa farmers themselves, but also for organic meat and dairy producers because beef and dairy cattle rely on organic alfalfa as a feedstock. It's not too extreme to say that approval of GE alfalfa has the potential to cripple the organic food industry.

There's still a glimmer of hope that Monsanto's GE alfalfa will get mowed down before it has a chance to really take root. The Center for Food Safety and a coalition of partner non-profits are putting together a lawsuit against the USDA and its decision to fully deregulate the crop. And technically President Obama could step in and put the kibosh on the Frankenfood scheme. Stay tuned for news about the lawsuit, and in the meantime, you can sign Food & Water Watch's petition asking President Obama to stop GE alfalfa before it gets planted.

Photo credit: juggernautco via Flickr