On December 2, the Northern California District Court vacated rules adopted in 2020 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture through its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). The lawsuit, brought by anti-bioengineering activists (pretending to be worried about family farms), reinstates a regulatory framework in place since 1986, while the technology was only in its infancy — and not yet even commercially available.
A group of anti-GMO organizations and nonprofits challenged APHIS’s 2020 rule (in a case titled National Family Farm Coalition v. Tom Vilsack) by arguing it was arbitrary, capricious, and violated federal statutes, including the Plant Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act. Without getting into all of the legalese underpinning these types of challenges, their argument was that the new rules lacked a reasonable basis, and that’s enough to vacate the rule.
[T]he court agreed with that assessment, but not in the way you might expect. The court relied on a 2002 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report to find examples of scientific data contradicting APHIS’s assumptions.Share this article
It certainly seems odd to rely on a report that is more than 20 years old, especially when we’re using methods that weren’t even dreamed of back then, but that’s exactly what the court did.
