3 Things the Supreme Court Should Know for its First-Ever Case on GM Crops

The Supreme Court starts hearing arguments today in a case on genetically modified crops. It marks the first time the court will confront the GM issue, and it has a lot of eyes watching because the outcome has the potential to change not only the list of foods that can be genetically modified in the future, but also government oversight of GM technology.

Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms involves an herbicide-resistant alfalfa—according to the Inter Press Service, "the planting of which has been banned in the U.S. since a federal court prohibited the multinational Monsanto from selling the seeds in 2007. That decision found that the U.S. Department of Agriculture did not do a thorough enough study of the impacts the GM alfalfa would have on human health and the environment and ordered the agency to do another environmental impact statement (EIS) review."

Depending how the court decides, the biggest victim in the case may be the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which mandates federal agencies to include environmental impact assessments in their decision-making processes.

The IPS story says NEPA is also "a key legal tool for environmental groups seeking to challenge those agencies' decisions. The vulnerability of NEPA is a key reason so many such groups have joined the plaintiffs by filing amicus briefs against Monsanto in this case."

Those groups include The Center for Biological Diversity and the Union of Concerned Scientists, one of whose scientists is quoted by IPS: "The issue here then becomes how amenable is the Supreme Court going to be in terms of allowing citizens to bring suit against an agency that is not doing its job, and that I think is the gist of what this decision may be."

At stake in the case's outcome is not only the legal implications, but the future of GMO foods and technology in general—again, the UCS scientist:

"There's been several indications beside this case that USDA has not been really doing an adequate job regulating genetically-engineered seed...As a scientist, having reviewed a number of environmental assessments that the agency has done, in my opinion they've often done a very lax, scientifically often unsupportable job in their analyses."

There is plenty of reason to be skeptical about the information that Monsanto wants the public to have, and even more reason to dig deeper into what it doesn't. Hopefully the plaintiffs come to their arguments prepared to do some education about Monsanto's pretty dubious environmental record. Here are three things we sure hope the Supreme Court keeps in mind as they ponder the course.

Keep reading to learn Three Reasons for the Supreme Court to be Skeptical.