U.S. District Court Rejects Genetically Modified Sugar Beets

Sugar beet at harvest time (Flickr photo by grabe)

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco has ruled that the U.S. government illegally approved a genetically modified, herbicide-resistant strain of sugar beets without adequately considering the chance they will contaminate other beet crops.

The ruling rejected the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s decision in 2005 to allow Monsanto Co. to sell the sugar beets, known as “Roundup-Ready” because they are engineered to coexist with Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.

Click here to read more: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/23-4