The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) issued an environmental assessment which clears the way for permits authorizing the planting of genetically engineered (GE) cold-tolerant eucalyptus trees in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas. The decision will allow the GE trees to flower on 27 of the 28 sites in these states.
ArborGen, the requester of the permits, is a forestry research and development company that is a joint venture of International Paper, MeadWestvaco Corporation and Rubicon Ltd. It is testing the viability of the trees as a new wood source for paper and biofuels.
APHIS concluded, “that these field releases are unlikely to pose a plant pest risk, nor are they likely to have a significant impact on the quality of the human environment.” The full environmental assessment may be found on the Federal Register on Page 26708-26709 dated May 12, 2010.
As with genetically engineered food crops, there are groups that disagree with this assessment. In its position statement, The Sierra Club lists among its objections that it “opposes the out-of-doors deployment of genetic technologies because the genes are free – as free as pollen on the wind – to invade nature, and because once this has happened they can’t be recalled.”
