A coalition of farmers, environmentalists and food safety organizations plans to ask a federal judge in California to halt the sale of Roundup Ready alfalfa seed, the group’s lawyer said Tuesday. The request follows a decision released two weeks ago in which U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer in San Francisco ruled that the U.S. Department of Agriculture failed to follow environmental law before approving the genetically modified forage.

A splinter group of more than 200 Sacramento Valley rice farmers is claiming that even experimental plantings of genetically modified rice jeopardize key export markets. The group, Rice Producers of California, plans to release today a market study that documents the powerful opposition to such technology in several key export destinations: Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Turkey. While the study generally reinforces conventional wisdom about these markets, the fact that the group saw fit to commission a study at all illustrates the anxiety that many export-dependent farmers continue to feel about genetically modified crops.

Erstmals hat der Bundesgerichtshof in den USA die Zulassung eines Gentech-Getreides durch das US-Landwirtschaftsministerium für nicht rechtens erklärt. Die Richter verkündeten, dass eine genaue Prüfung der Auswirkung des Anbaus auf die Umwelt bei der Zulassung nicht gegeben war.

The next decade of research in crops improved by biotechnology will include a major role for the rapidly increasing number of projects in Asia, according to the head of a leading agricultural research institute. Countries in Asia increasingly are investing in agricultural biotechnology research aimed at helping them meet their growing needs for food, feed, fiber and fuel, said Clive James, chairman of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA).

The idea for biotech, or genetically engineered, wheat was to develop a variety of wheat that is herbicide resistant. An international agriculture company developed such wheat and other commodity crops by infusing bacteria with genes that produces proteins resistant to Roundup, which kills essential plant proteins, said Talbert. [...] Unfortunately for this international company, the wheat customers didn’t buy the concept of using DNA to alter or modify wheat varieties. There is a bill in the Montana Legislature that makes it difficult for Montana producers to grow genetically engineered crops and making sure the company selling the wheat is liable for contaminant damages, said Talbert.

U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday introduced bills that would clear the way for generic competition in biotech drugs — a health care shift that would save Missouri employers and patients $1.5 billion over 10 years, said one study. In Illinois, that savings would be nearly $3 billion over 10 years, according to the report set for release today by Express Scripts Inc., a Maryland Heights-based pharmacy-benefits manager. The national benefit over 10 years would be $71 billion. ”The dollars to be saved are really big — and probably even bigger than what we’ve put into this study,” which used conservative assumptions, said Steve Miller, Express Scripts’ chief medical officer.

A House committee approved legislation to prevent discrimination by employers and insurers against people on the basis of genetic information. ”There is a clear need for us to pass a law to protect genetic information from discriminatory uses,” Representative George Miller, a California Democrat and chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said before today"s unanimous voice vote by the panel.

In what will likely be a precedent-setting ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer of the Northern District of California decided in favor of farmers, consumers, and environmentalists who filed a suit calling the USDA’s approval of genetically engineered (GE) alfalfa a threat to farmers’ livelihoods and a risk to the environment. Judge Breyer ordered that a full Environmental Impact Statement must be carried out on ”Roundup Ready” alfalfa, the GE variety developed by Monsanto and Forage Genetics. The decision may prevent this season’s sales and planting of Monsanto’s GE alfalfa and future submissions of other GE crops for commercial deregulation.

A new genetically modified yeast variety designed for use in wine production has been found to behave similarly to the parent commercial yeast strains during fermentation, according to its manufacturer First Venture Technologies. [...] First Venture Technologies’ propriety yeast claims to be able to reduce levels of the carcinogen ethyl carbamate, a compound that can naturally occur in fermented foods and beverages, such as wine, beer and bread. The firm says its yeast can reduce levels of the substance in red wine by up to 89 percent, and in bread by up to 54 percent.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, this year the country is going to use 18 to 20 percent of its total corn crop for the production of ethanol, and by next year that will jump to 25 percent. And that increase, says Marshall Martin, an agriculture economist at Purdue University, ”is the main driver behind the price increase for corn.” The jump in corn prices is already affecting the cost of food. The most notable example: in Mexico, which gets much of its corn from the United States, the price of corn tortillas has doubled in the past year, according to press reports, setting off large protest marches in Mexico City.