Sugar Beet Industry's Opinion on Roundup Ready Sugar Beets
and Frank Morton’s Response
The pro-biotech web site “Truth About Trade & Technology” published an article written by a farmer named Noel Kjesbo, who is a sugar beet producer in the Red River Valley (North Dakota and Minnesota – he doesn’t say specifically which state he farms). Noel was responding to the lawsuit brought by OSA and others against USDA-APHIS for the improper deregulation of a Roundup Ready sugar beet. Noel accused Organic Seed Alliance and the co-plaintiffs of being ”fraudulent”, “dishonest”, “selfish”,  and of using “misleading names”. He believes that we are using “global terrorism and food scares” to cause anxiety around food safety, and specifically the safety of genetically modified foods.
While we at OSA do have concerns about the human and environmental health impacts of industrial biotech agriculture, we also have concerns about the impact of biotech crops on organic farmers freedom to operate - their ability to produce organic food with integrity and compete in the marketplace .
The following was a response written by Frank Morton – farmer, plant breeder, and owner of Wild Garden Seeds in Philomath, Oregon:
As a farmer, seedsman, plant breeder, member of the Isolation Pinning Rules Committee of Oregon’s Willamette Valley Specialty Seeds Association, and director on the boards of both Organic Seed Alliance and the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, I want to offer agricultural perspective on the deregulation and planting of genetically engineered Roundup Ready sugar beets.
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