Experimental GMO crops sprouting up across America, while USDA, the overseeing agency, takes ‘industry-friendly approach’
by: Julie Wilson
NaturalNews.com
Friday, April 01, 2016
Experimental crops genetically engineered to withstand high doses of pesticides are growing all over the U.S., and in some cases illegally. However, rarely does the biotech industry suffer repercussions, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the agency responsible for oversight, largely ignores violators.
Field trials involving genetically modified organisms (GMOs) serve a multitude of purposes, including both industrial and pharmaceutical applications. The USDA, responsible for protecting America’s food supply, is supposed to oversee these field trials.
Documents obtained by Hearst Newspapers through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) disclosed a “swiftly expanding outdoor experimentation and industry-friendly oversight of those experiments,” according to a report by the San Francisco Chronicle.
A careful review of the documents found that the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), an agency under the USDA responsible for regulating GMOs, among other duties, has been taking it pretty easy on violators, issuing just two civil penalties for field trial infractions since 2010, despite there being hundreds of notices of non-compliance.
The incidences range from minor paperwork violations to lost seeds and GMOs growing where they shouldn’t be, according to a report by Seattlepi.com.
GMO inspectors issue only 2 citations despite there being at least 200 reports of non-compliance
The Rest…HERE
