Roundup Ready Gene Absent from Mystery GM Wheat
10 June 2013 
Two Eastern Washington State farms that grow soft white wheat filed a class action lawsuit in Spokane federal court against Monsanto. The lawsuit, a first class action against Monsanto over its release of unauthorized genetically engineered wheat, was filed on behalf of all domestic soft white wheat farmers.
Monsanto field tested genetically-engineered wheat resistant to the herbicide Roundup in 16 states from 1998 and 2005. This wheat has never been approved for planting in the U.S. Although Monsanto indicated that it halted its trials nine years ago, genetically-engineered wheat was thought to have been discovered on an Eastern Oregon farm.
On June 10, however, Monsanto announced that after a series of tests on a broad set of wheat seed varieties from farms throughout Oregon and Washington including seeds directly from the seed stock in question, Monsanto found that the samples were clean of the CP4 event in wheat. Monsanto said in a statement that it has now tested seed from 56 varieties, which represent more than 80% of all the acres of soft white winter/spring wheat seed varieties. All the samples have been found free of the illegal gene.
USDA has said the Oregon wheat is safe to eat and there is no evidence that modified wheat entered the marketplace. No genetically engineered wheat has been approved for U.S. farming.
The lawsuit contends that the discovery of what was thought to be Monsanto’s unapproved wheat has detrimentally affected the ability of soft white wheat farmers to sell their wheat into export channels as many countries, such as Japan and South Korea, are cancelling orders and refusing to accept imports of domestic soft white wheat. These import restrictions could prove financially devastating to soft white wheat farmers in the Pacific Northwest. Nearly 90% of the Pacific Northwest’s soft white wheat crop is exported to Asian nations.
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