Sierra Club joins suit over genetically engineered alfalfa

Alfalfa is grown on over 21 million acres, and is worth $8 billion per year (not including the value of final products, such as dairy products), making it the country's third most valuable and fourth most widely grown crop.  Alfalfa is primarily used in feed for dairy cows and beef cattle, and it also greatly contributes to pork, lamb, sheep, and honey production.  Consumers also eat alfalfa as sprouts in salads and other foods.

It's a perennial (it sprouts more than once) and is pollinated by bees which can carry the pollen for many miles.  Seeds can also be disbursed by wind and by transportation of the crop.  Deregulation of this crop will thus mean that RoundUp Ready (herbicide resistant) alfalfa will spread throughout the country whether farmers want it or not.  In some places it will be a genetically engineered, RoundUp resistant weed. 

The lawsuit filed in federal court in the Northern District of California on February 15th calls on the court to rescind the deregulated status of Monsanto's Roundup Ready alfalfa, calling USDA's decision to approve the crop arbitrary and capricious.  The lawsuit also challenges USDA for its inadequate environmental review of the crop and calls for a full environmental impact statement.