Looks like USDA might be standing up to Monsanto [View all]

[mucifer]

What's going on here is that the National Environmental Policy Act, all federal agencies, including USDA, are required to perform an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) if there's a chance that a regulatory decision will affect the human environment. But for years, the USDA did not issue such analyses as part of its process of approving GMO crops, and watchdog groups like the Center for Food Safety have repeatedly and successfully sued the department for failing to do so.

Before Friday's bombshell, everyone assumed that the USDA would eventually approve the new Dow and Monsanto crops —and just brace for the inevitable lawsuit from the Center for Food Safety. But in its Friday press release, USDA declared that it has "determined that its regulatory decisions may significantly affect the quality of the human environment … [and] therefore believes it necessary under NEPA to prepare these two EIS's to further assist the Agency in evaluating any potential environmental impacts before we make a final determination regarding the products' regulatory status."

The immediate effect will be a substantial delay in any final decision on approval. The process typically takes at least a year—which is why, as I note above, Dow now expects not to be able to sell its new seeds in 2014.

The real question now is whether the EIS process could actually prompt the USDA to reject the crops outright—something it has rarely done before. As I explained in two 2011 posts (here and here), the USDA has been given by Congress a shockingly weak framework for regulating GM crops—and has done little or nothing to broaden that framework through precedent.

more at: http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/05/shocking-everyone-usda-sticks-it-monsanto-and-dow%E2%80%94-least-temporarily

I'm hoping for the best with our food safety.