Free Republic

Monsanto Co said on Wednesday it reached a settlement with U.S. wheat farmers who sued the seed company over market disruption after unapproved genetically engineered wheat was discovered growing without oversight in Oregon. Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" wheat, which was never approved by U.S. regulators and which the company said it stopped testing a decade ago, was found growing in an Oregon farmer's field in 2013. The company had said all the experimental grain was destroyed or stored away. South Korea and Japan temporarily halted purchases of U.S. wheat after the announcement on fears the unapproved wheat, engineered to withstand Roundup...

Earlier this year, the USDA made a decision to allow the commercial use of “Roundup Ready” genetically modified sugar beets. The decision came a week after the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture approved the planting of a yet another genetically modified plant, alfalfa. Michael Gregoire, deputy administrator of APHIS, a biotechnology regulatory service claims genetically modified sugar beets are safe and should be deregulated. “After conducting an environmental assessment, we have determined Roundup Ready sugar beets could be partially deregulated without posing a plant pest risk or causing significant effects on the environment,” says Gregoire. APHIS claims the partial deregulation of...