FEDS YANK GE CROPS FROM ALL NORTHEAST REFUGES

[ensho]

http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1443


The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has agreed to stop planting genetically engineered (GE) crops on all its refuges within a dozen Northeastern states, according to a settlement agreement in a lawsuit brought by conservation and food safety groups. Because the federal government would not agree to end illegal GE agriculture in refuges nationally, new litigation is being prepared in other regions where as many as 75 other national wildlife refuges now growing GE crops are vulnerable to similar suits.

The lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Delaware, filed by the Widener Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic on behalf of Delaware Audubon Society, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and the Center for Food Safety, charged that the Fish & Wildlife Service had illegally entered into Cooperative Farming Agreements with private parties, allowing hundreds of acres on its Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware to be plowed over without the environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

In settling the suit, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service promised to revoke any authorization for further GE agriculture at Bombay Hook and the four other refuges with GE crops: the Rappahannock River Valley Refuge and the Eastern Shore of Virginia Refuge, Montezuma Refuge in New York and Blackwater Refuge of Maryland, unless and until an appropriate NEPA analysis is completed – a condition that has yet to be met for GE agriculture on a National Wildlife Refuge.

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PEER and the Center for Food Safety are now shifting their litigation focus to the Southeast, where many refuges still grow GE crops. National wildlife refuges have allowed farming for decades but in recent years refuge farming has been converted to GE crops because that is only seed farmers can obtain. Today, the vast majority of crops grown on refuges are genetically engineered. Scientists warn that GE crops can lead to increased pesticide use on refuges and can harm birds, aquatic animals, and other wildlife.

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really good news. thank you PEER/Center for Food Safety for all your hard work.

[SpiralHawk]

1. Spare our planet from the Mutant GMO depredations of RepubliCorp's PSM plots

RepubliCorp's blind, greed driven, death-dealing willful debasement of life with PSM*

* Pervo-Scientific Materialism (R)....

[eppur_se_muova]

2. In a WILDLIFE REFUGE ?? WTF ?

When did this program start? Under Bush the Leastest, I'm assuming, unless informed otherwise.

Correction: according to the lawsuit, this has been going on since at least 1996 -- that would be Clinton's watch. This program should have been DOA with a Dem in the WH. Sadly, we can't cound on Dem leaders not to "go along to get along" with corporate interests.