Business and Finance

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday lifted a 2007 ban on Monsanto Co.’s Roundup Ready alfalfa that was supposed to protect conventional and organic growers from having their crops tainted by cross-pollination.

The court’s 7-1 vote reversed a lower court ruling and makes it possible for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to approve planting of genetically engineered alfalfa seeds on an interim basis until a final decision is made next spring.

Perhaps more importantly, Monday’s ruling may have broader implications for the approval of other biotech crops, including Monsanto’s Roundup Ready sugar beets, which are the subject of another court battle.

"This Supreme Court ruling is important for every American farmer, not just alfalfa growers," David F. Snively, Monsanto senior vice president and general counsel, said in a statement.

"All growers can rely on the expertise of USDA, and trust that future challenges to biotech approvals must now be based on scientific facts, not speculation."

The Center for Food Safety, a Washington-based group opposed to genetically modified crops, said the victory was a hollow one for Monsanto and other backers of genetically engineered crops because the USDA must still complete an environmental impact statement before it can deregulate Roundup Ready alfalfa.

Biotech crop developers favor a more streamlined regulatory process to get products to market without having to wait the several years it takes to complete a more thorough environmental analysis.

"The bottom line for us is that planting is still illegal, as it was," George Kimbrell, a senior staff attorney for the Center for Food Safety, said in an interview. "The Department of Agriculture can take further action that will allow planting, but the court held that it would require an (environmental impact statement), and our right to challenge it has been preserved."

Based on Monday’s ruling, the USDA is now free to allow farmers to plant genetically modified alfalfa seeds with restrictions designed to limit cross-pollination and contamination of conventional alfalfa crops.

The USDA said it was moving forward with plans to complete the regulatory review of Roundup Ready alfalfa in time for the planting season next spring. The agency issued a 1,476-page draft environmental impact statement in December that reported no significant effect from the seeds on the environment or human health.

The alfalfa case represents the Supreme Court’s foray into the debate over genetically engineered crops, which have been available since Monsanto began selling Roundup Ready soybeans in 1996.

Like those first biotech soybeans, Monsanto’s alfalfa is genetically modified to withstand applications of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup weed killer.

While Roundup-resistant crops make it easier for growers to combat weeds because they can spray entire fields without damaging the primary crop, organic and conventional alfalfa growers fear contamination by pollen from the genetically modified plants that can be carried between fields by bees.

Two conventional alfalfa growers and several environmental groups, including the Center for Food Safety, filed a lawsuit in 2006 that challenged the USDA’s decision a year earlier to deregulate biotech alfalfa.

In 2007, a federal district court ordered that USDA’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service erred by deregulating Roundup Ready alfalfa without preparing an environmental impact study. The court banned distribution of the genetically modified alfalfa but allowed farmers who had already purchased seeds to plant. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling.

Monday’s majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, said the district court "abused its discretion" by imposing the sweeping ban on biotech alfalfa, and should have allowed the USDA to partially deregulate the crop while the environmental study was ongoing.

Justice John Paul Stevens was the lone dissenter. Justice Stephen Breyer didn’t take part in the decision. His brother is the district court judge who ordered the 2007 ban.

Before the ban took effect, Roundup Ready alfalfa was planted on about 220,000 acres — less than 1 percent of the 23 million acres of alfalfa grown nationwide.

Alfalfa is the fourth-most widely grown U.S. crop behind corn, soybeans and wheat, according to the USDA. It is mainly used for livestock feed, and much of what is grown is exported.

Creve Coeur-based Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, developed Roundup Ready alfalfa but licenses the technology to Forage Genetics, an alfalfa breeder.

The biotech alfalfa case has been closely watched by the agriculture industry, biotechnology groups and environmentalists because of the potential ripple effect of any decision affecting genetically modified crops. In a brief filed in the Monsanto case, for instance, rice growers contended that contamination of long-grain rice had already cost their industry $1 billion.

Meanwhile, the next legal skirmish over genetically modified crops shifts back to the West Coast next month.

That’s when a federal district court will consider the next steps after ruling last year that the USDA erred by approving Monsanto’s Roundup Ready sugar beets without an environmental impact statement.

In that case, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White decided not to implement a nationwide injunction similar to the ban on alfalfa. But he didn’t rule out ordering a permanent ban later this year.

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Georgina Gustin of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

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