GE Alfalfa: Tell Congress to Hold USDA Accountable!

February 26, 2010

Call

your Senators and Representative today and say

“USDA must not

approve GE alfalfa!”

Monsanto wants to sell its genetically engineered (GE)

alfalfa and wants the USDA to approve its permit application,

but consumers, farmers, dairies, and food companies don’t

want GE alfalfa plants and seeds released into the

environment.

USDA’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS)

admits that if GE alfalfa is approved:

* GE Contamination of non-GE and organic alfalfa crops will

occur* GE contamination will economically impact small and

family farmers* Foreign export markets will be at risk due

to rejection of GE contaminated products* Farmers will be

forced to use more toxic herbicides to remove old stands of

alfalfaYet, unbelievably, USDA has decided that

these impacts are insignificant! And, USDA intends to

approve Monsanto’s Roundup Ready™ GE alfalfa

anyway.

Call your Congressional Representatives

today and ask them to hold USDA accountable by contacting

Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack and urging him to deny approval

of Monsanto's GE alfalfa! Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard:

(202)224-3121 and ask for your Senator/Representative’s

office. If you do not know who they are click here to look them up. Speak with the

agriculture staff person or leave a message. Tell them that you

DO NOT support the deregulation of GE alfalfa, for the following

reasons:* GE contamination of non-GE and organic crops

would be inevitable* You won’t buy products that are

GE-contaminated* Alfalfa is a major food source for

livestock and GE alfalfa would destroy the integrity of organic

dairy products* You support the rights of farmers to grow

the crops of their choice, and GE contamination makes that

impossible* GE crops increase pesticide use, harming human

health and the environment * Ask your Representative and

Senators to contact Secretary Vilsack and urge him to deny USDA

approval of Monsanto's GE alfalfa

Then email us at info and tell us

who you called and let us know what kind

of response you got!

Background

In 2006, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) sued the Department

of Agriculture (USDA) for its illegal approval of

Monsanto’s genetically engineered (GE) Roundup Ready

alfalfa. USDA failed to conduct an environmental impact

statement (EIS) before deregulating the crop, as required by

law. An EIS is a rigorous analysis of the potential

significant environmental, health, and economic impacts of a

federal decision, mandated under the National Environmental

Policy Act (NEPA). The federal courts sided with CFS and

banned GE alfalfa until the USDA fully analyzed the impacts of

the GE plant on the environment, farmers, and the public in an

EIS.

USDA released its draft EIS on December 14, 2009. A

75-day comment period is now open until 3 March, 2010. CFS

has begun analyzing the EIS and it is clear that the USDA has

not taken the concerns of non-GE alfalfa farmers, dairies,

exporters, retailers or consumers into consideration in its

recommendation to approve the commercial sale (deregulation) of

GE alfalfa. In fact, the EIS states that consumers don't

care if their organic food is GE contaminated and neither do

organic farmers, as long as farmers employ the organic practices

required under the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA).

Obviously, this is not true and we need to push our

Congressional representatives to call upon USDA to deny the

approval of GE alfalfa.

For more talking points and links to review

the EIS and other documents, click

here, or copy and paste this URL into your browser's address

bar: http://ga3.org/cfs/EIScongress.html

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