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Court rejects genetically modified sugar beets
The government illegally approved a genetically modified, herbicide-resistant strain of sugar beets without adequately considering the chance they will contaminate other beet crops, a federal judge in San Francisco has ruled.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White 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.
Sugar beets produce 30 percent of the world's sugar and, according to consumer groups, half the granulated sugar in the United States. This year's planting, centered in Oregon's Willamette Valley, is the first to include a full crop of the Monsanto product.
White said the USDA, in concluding that the new crop would have no significant environmental effects, discounted the likelihood that wind-borne pollen would spread to fields where conventional sugar beets, table beets and the beet variety known as Swiss chard are grown.