GE CROP

On genetic engineering (GE), the good news just keeps coming in: German and US courts are speaking out against GE companies, and in favour of protective measures. Recent polling shows that the majority of Europeans opposed to GE keeps growing, and one million of them have already signed our petition. Oh, and did we mention the Vatican?    
In San Francisco last week, US district judge White couldn’t have been clearer. The GE seeds company Monsanto had illegally planted GE sugar-beet in Arizona and Oregon; the permits for it had been granted by the US Department of Agriculture in violation of an earlier ruling. The judge’s order: Up-root and destroy the whole lot of it!
The organic farmers who had launched the lawsuit were only right to ask for protection, the judge said. There was plenty of evidence for the "irreparable" consequences of cross-contamination from GE and they had made “a strong showing that they and the environment are likely to suffer irreparable harm if this court does not issue an injunction.”
So, an injunction he issued. Back in October, another US federal court slapped Monsanto’s rival Bayer for the alleged contamination of long-grain rice by the German company’s GE seeds. The lawsuit – also launched by farmers – followed six similar trials. Bayer lost all of them. The bill so far: $54 million US Dollars.
A German court, meanwhile, just shot down the attempt by one of the country’s federal states to water down the country’s GE laws. The state (Saxony Anhalt; supported by lawyers from Monsanto) argued that a public register that shows where GE crops are grown in the country was against the constitution. The Federal Constitutional Court disagreed – wholeheartedly.
And not just that. The court – the country’s highest legal authority – also publically acknowledged the unknown long-term risks of GE. In their decision, the judges said that “by deliberately altering genetic material, genetic engineering intervenes with the elementary structures of life. The implications of such an intervention can only be reversed with difficulty, if at all