Obama administration gives green light for GMOs to be planted in national wildlife refuges

Friday, June 17, 2011 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: GMOs, national wildlife refuge, health news

(NaturalNews) A battle is raging over whether or not it should be legal to plant genetically-modified (GM) crops in US wildlife refuges. A little over a month after various conservation and food safety groups achieved a unified legal victory that banned all future plantings of GMOs in refuges, the Obama administration announced its full-fledged support for GMOs in refuges. And the administration is now working towards ramrodding through a new plan that would exempt the issue of GMO plantings in refuges from having to face any further legal challenges that oppose them.

According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a non-profit alliance of local, state, and federal resource professionals, the Obama administration is on a quest, of sorts, to create justification for GM plantings in the refuges. Only crops deemed "essential" to refuge operations are permitted for planting, so the administration will have to craft some pretty manipulative rhetoric in order to make its proposal anything other than a pitifully laughable insult to both science and common sense.

"These (Obama administration) plans are based on the curious notion that wildlife benefit from having the small slivers of habitat set aside for them covered by genetically engineered soybeans," said Jeff Ruch, PEER's Executive Director. "To boost US exports, the Obama administration is forcing wildlife refuges into political prostitution."

Promises of hope and change apparently do not apply to federal policy concerning "Frankenfoods," which have received even more support from the current administration than from previous ones. The Obama administration is responsible for overturning numerous court decisions that would have banned, or at least better regulated, GM crops that have never been proven safe, including GM sugar beets (https://www.naturalnews.com/029724_sugar_beet...) and GM alfalfa (https://www.naturalnews.com/031196_GE_alfalfa...).

"The Obama administration says that it is devoted to scientific integrity but these new reviews are scientific travesties," added Ruch, concerning the complete and utter lack of any legitimate scientific proof that GMOs are safe for the refuges. "The sole document assessing the environmental impacts of genetically engineered planting in 25 Southeastern refuges is only six pages long."

Sources for this story include:

http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=...