The USDA “unconstitutionally delegated its own duties to protect farmers and the environment to GE crop developers” when it exempted most genetically engineered plants from pre-market reviews in 2020, said a coalition of farm, environment and consumer groups in a lawsuit filed on Monday. In it, they asked the U.S. district court in San Francisco to over-turn the Trump-era revisions.
Dubbed SECURE, the new regulation said GE plants needed review by USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, whose duties include regulation of agricultural biotechnology, only if developers believed they might pose an environmental risk. SECURE reflected the biotechnology industry’s argument that gene editing is an inherently safe way to produce new plant varieties with traits that could be achieved through traditional breeding methods.
“The rules unlawfully eviscerate and abandon USDA’s responsibility to protect farmers and the environment,” said George Kimbrell of the Center for Food Safety, one of the plaintiffs. Jim Goodman of the National Family Farm Coalition, another plaintiff, said SECURE “will only exacerbate the rampant consolidation in the agricultural seed and pesticide industry.”
In the lawsuit, the groups said the USDA, “in a radical departure,” abolished its longstanding process of reviewing GE crops before allowing field trials and formal approval of them for commercial cultivation. “There will not be any analysis or transparency” under environmental or endangered species laws of the likely impact of the new crops, they said. “In effect, USDA has attempted to get out of the regulation business entirely in this area. In so doing, USDA unconstitutionally delegated its own duties to protect farmers and the environment to to GE crop developers.”
The USDA revealed the new regulation in May 2020, 11 months after President Trump told the three federal regulators of biotechnology — the USDA, EPA and FDA — to modernize their handling of agricultural biotechnology. In a reference to gene-edited crops and livestock, Trump said in an executive order that regulators should “exempt low-risk products of agriculture biotechnology from undue regulation.”
Farm and trade groups said the old regulatory system, which focused on classical biotechnology, was unduly costly and time-consuming given the increased scientific familiarity with biotechnology and the emergence of gene editing and similar techniques. Modernized regulations were needed as well, they said, to assure U.S. preeminence in the field against overseas competitors.
To read the lawsuit, click here.