US Judge Rules GM Sugar Beet Be Destroyed

The proliferation of GM life forms, unlike so-called 'climate change', is a genuine environmental crisis. All GMOs outside of the lab should be destroyed. Oh sure you may say that sounds a little authoritarian, but in reality GM poses a real and present threat to all human life. Not to mention the quasi-slavery being forced on farmers with Monsanto's 'terminator' seeds that farmers have to buy from them every year. Wonder what would happen if by some unfortunate accident, once everyone was dependent on GM foods, Monsanto sadly went out of business and nobody could make the special seeds any more? Oh what a tragedy, whatever would we do for food then...

Monsanto GMO sugarbeets to be destroyed: court

(Reuters) - A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the destruction of plantings of genetically modified sugar beets developed by Monsanto Co after ruling previously the U.S. Agriculture Department illegally approved the biotech crop.

U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White in August banned the planting and sales of Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" biotech sugar beets after determining that their approval in 2005 by the USDA was illegal. He said the government must conduct a thorough environmental review before approving the crop to comply with the law.

But shortly after the ruling, the USDA issued permits allowing companies to plant seedlings to produce seed for future GMO sugar beet crops.

In his ruling Tuesday Judge White said those seedlings "shall be removed from the ground."

Earthjustice, a consumer group that brought the case against the USDA and had asked the judge to order the young plants be destroyed, said the action was the first court-ordered destruction of a GMO crop.

"We had to run into court and ask the judge to stop them," said Earthjustice attorney Paul Achitoff. "He said you've got to tear up the plants, which was what we asked him to do. It's an extreme sort of a thing ... but the circumstances were such that there really wasn't any alternative. They basically had dared the court to stop them."

Sugar beets account for more than half of the nation's sugar supply, and Monsanto's Roundup Ready beets have been popular with farmers as they have been genetically altered to withstand sprayings of the chemical herbicide Roundup, making weed management easier for producers.

But environmentalists say widespread use of the crop leads to increased use of herbicides, proliferation of herbicide resistant weeds, and contamination of conventional and organic crops.

Monsanto, which owns intellectual property rights to the sugar beet technology, sought to intervene in the case, and was granted limited standing. But the company had no immediate comment on Tuesday.

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