Bio-beet rules due in months

APHIS plans to issue permits to seed growers for planting this fall

By WES SANDER

Capital Press

Federal regulators say they will decide by year's end on rules regulating production of biotech sugar beets for the next two seasons.

Unregulated production of Monsanto's Roundup Ready sugar beets was banned last month by a federal judge.

USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said it is considering a partial deregulation of the crop under its regulatory authority, and is conducting an environmental analysis of the proposed conditions "to inform its decision making."

The partial deregulation will adhere to interim restrictions that the agency proposed in court earlier this year, APHIS said. Those restrictions included:

* Prohibiting use of the seeds in California -- where sugar beets are no longer a significant commodity -- and in 19 counties in Washington west of the Cascades.

* Establishing four-mile buffer zones in Oregon's Willamette Valley between fields where the biotech seeds are produced and crops that could be cross-pollinated, including Swiss chard, sugar beets, table beets and fodder beets.

* Requiring growers to provide GPS coordinates of Roundup Ready beet fields to APHIS. The agency says it would disclose only the fields' distances from potential cross-pollinating crops, and only to growers who request the information.

* Detailed restrictions on how seed producers can handle biotech seeds, with a third party certifying compliance.

* Requirements that all root-crop growers remove flowering plants before they produce pollen or seed.

APHIS also said it is issuing permits to seed producers to continue cultivation.

"That's a relief for me as a commercial grower," said Duane Grant, chairman of Snake River Sugar Company in Idaho. "We've got to stay on track with plantings or we'll develop a seed shortage in 2012."

Producers would currently be planting to produce seed for the 2012 crop, but planting was put on hold following an Aug. 13 court decision that banned unregulated production of the seed and root crops.

Organic growers and environmentalists, who claimed the seeds posed a danger of cross-pollination, filed suit in 2008 to block production of the crop.

White revoked the seeds' deregulated status until APHIS completes an environmental-impact statement to satisfy federal rules, a process expected to take two years. His ruling gave APHIS the authority to regulate the crop in the interim.

Grant said beet producers need word of what to expect by early December. A decision by then would help growers' decisions on purchasing seeds to be planted next spring, he said.

"We really need a decision by about the first of December," Grant said. "But we're cognizant of the fact that APHIS has some extensive work to do."

Paul Atchitoff of Earthjustice, lead attorney for plaintiffs in the lawsuit, has said plaintiffs will likely challenge APHIS again if the agency tries to allow the seeds without sufficient environmental documentation.

Atchitoff was not immediately available for comment.

APHIS deregulated Monsanto's seed genes in 2005. An estimated 95 percent of the domestic industry now uses seeds containing the Roundup Ready traits. Sugar beets account for about half the domestic sugar crop.