The USDA has opened up a second public comment period to seek input for the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) they plan to prepare on whether or not to approve the GE American chestnut.
We need to respond in force. The pro-GE tree side is mobilizing their base to submit comments promoting GE trees. We must remind the USDA that people across the world oppose GE trees and will not allow them to be planted in our forests.
As we have carefully documented, the timber and biotechnology industries selected the GE American chestnut as a Trojan Horse designed to pave the way for industrial plantations of GE trees and other GMOs that industry wants to release into the environment.
Please submit a comment before the September 7 deadline telling the USDA they must REJECT this risky and unpredictable GE tree. Simply go to: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/APHIS-2020-0030-4324
Below is a sample comment. Please use or change as you wish.
The USDA must reject the application by researchers that would allow them to plant the Darling 58, a genetically engineered (GE) facsimile of the American chestnut in our forests. This is an unprecedented, irreversible and extremely dangerous experiment.
If approved, this tree is designed to spread and contaminate remaining wild American chestnuts threatening their very existence. The long-term impacts of this fungus resistant GE tree on soils, beneficial fungus or forest ecosystems are unknown, but could be devastating. This GE tree could also deal another blow to pollinators whose numbers are already crashing.
The extremely short-term risk assessment studies, some of which do not even use Darling 58 pollen, are completely inadequate to understand the potential impacts of a GE tree that could live hundreds of years and spread over large distances. There would be no way to call them back if something went wrong, years or decades later.
People across the world oppose GE trees and will not allow them to be planted in our forests. The Darling 58 American chestnut and all GE trees must be rejected.
Read the details and documentation in the white paper Biotechnology For Forest Health? The Test Case of the Genetically Engineered American Chestnut.
Please submit your comments BEFORE TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 7, 2021 to: