PROPOSED RULE: Modified Organisms Subject to the Plant Protection Act Regulations.gov Document ID: <a href="https://www.regulations.gov/document/USDA-2026-0133-0001" target="_self">USDA-2026-0133-0001</a> Comment Period: May 15, 2026 to June 30, 2026 Agency: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
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The USDA is considering a dangerous course of action: weakening—or potentially eliminating oversight of genetically engineered organisms.
If we don't generate massive public opposition, the Trump Administration could transform the United States into the GMO Wild West.
For decades, the biotechnology industry has argued that genetically engineered plants, animals, and microorganisms are essentially the same as their natural counterparts, and therefore require little or no regulation. Despite strong peer-reviewed scientific evidence to the contrary, the USDA is openly exploring "risk-based deregulation" and "non-regulatory solutions" for genetically engineered organisms.
This is a profound mistake.
Genetically engineered organisms are not the same as naturally occurring organisms. They can introduce new traits, new proteins, and entirely novel biological functions into our food system and environment. Treating them as if they are no different from conventional organisms ignores both science and history.
And history has already provided some alarming warnings.&nbsp;
When GMO Experiments Go Wrong
Imagine federal regulators ordering a company to destroy $3.5 million worth of soybeans because the crop became contaminated with corn engineered to produce a vaccine for pigs.
That sounds unbelievable. But it actually happened.&nbsp;
In 2002, biotech company ProdiGene allowed experimental pharmaceutical-producing GMO corn to contaminate a soybean crop in Nebraska. The USDA ordered more than half a million bushels of soybeans destroyed because veterinary vaccine material had entered the food supply.
Or consider StarLink corn.
This genetically engineered corn was approved only for animal feed because the insecticidal protein it produced was considered a potential allergen. Yet the corn escaped into the human food supply through pollen drift and grain mixing. The contamination spread throughout the U.S. grain system, triggering nationwide recalls and reports of allergic reactions.&nbsp;
These incidents occurred under the current regulatory system. What happens if oversight is weakened even further?&nbsp;
The Risks Are Growing
Today's genetic engineering technologies go far beyond the first generation of GMO crops.&nbsp;
Scientists are now engineering microorganisms, fungi, bacteria, plants, and animals using powerful tools such as gene editing and synthetic biology. Some of these organisms are being designed to produce pesticides, alter plant traits, modify soil conditions, or perform other agricultural functions.
Without strong oversight, these technologies could create unintended consequences such as:
<ul>
<li style="margin-left:0in;">Engineered microbes spreading beyond their intended location and disrupting natural ecosystems.</li>
<li>Altered organisms transferring genetic material to wild populations or other microorganisms.</li>
<li>Damage to beneficial insects, pollinators, soil organisms, and other non-target species.</li>
<li>Increased herbicide use, herbicide drift, and contamination of neighboring farms.</li>
<li>Long-term ecological impacts that cannot be reversed once living organisms are released into the environment.</li>
</ul>
Once a genetically engineered organism is released, it cannot simply be recalled like a defective product.
We Need Your Voice
The USDA recently reopened public comments on GMO regulations, but only until June 30 at 11:59 PM Eastern.
This may be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to influence how genetically engineered organisms are regulated in the United States.
We urge you to submit a comment and tell the USDA:
<ul>
<li>Existing GMO regulations are already inadequate.</li>
<li>Oversight should be strengthened—not weakened.</li>
<li>Gene-edited organisms, genetically engineered microbes, and synthetic biology products must receive thorough and meaningful review.</li>
<li>Human health, environmental impacts, pollinators, biodiversity, neighboring farms, and ecosystems must all be considered before approval.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
We have prepared a suggested comment that you can personalize and submit.
Please don't sit this one out.
Federal agencies are required to consider public comments when making regulatory decisions. Every comment helps demonstrate public opposition to deregulation and support for stronger safeguards.&nbsp;
Take action today.
The future of our food system, environment, and public health depends on the decisions being made right now.&nbsp;
Thank you for standing with us.&nbsp;
With gratitude,
The GMO/Toxin Free USA Team

DON’T LET THE USDA DEREGULATE GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS

The USDA’s regulation of genetically engineered crops has failed to keep pace with the realities faced by farmers and rural communities.

For many years, USDA reviews have focused primarily on whether a GMO crop poses a plant pest risk. While this approach may satisfy a narrow legal requirement, it does not adequately address the real-world risks and impacts that GMO cropping systems can have on neighboring farms, agricultural economies, and rural landscapes.

Many GMO crops are designed to tolerate herbicides. These crops are intended to be grown along with the application of those herbicides, making the crop and the chemical system inseparable. Any meaningful regulatory review should evaluate the combined impacts of the technology as it is actually used in the field.

Farmers across the country have experienced the consequences of this regulatory blind spot. Herbicide drift has damaged conventional and organic crops, orchards, vineyards, gardens, and trees. Dicamba drift alone has affected millions of acres and generated conflict among neighboring farmers while imposing significant economic costs on those whose crops were harmed.

The evolution of herbicide-resistant weeds has also created a cycle of escalating chemical use, forcing growers to adopt increasingly intensive weed-management strategies. Similarly, insect resistance associated with plant-incorporated protectants demonstrates that biological systems adapt to these technologies over time, often producing unintended consequences.

As biotechnology advances through gene editing and synthetic biology, USDA should learn from past experience rather than repeat previous mistakes. Future regulations should fully evaluate environmental, agricultural, economic, and public health impacts before genetically engineered organisms are exempted from oversight or allowed to proceed through simplified review pathways.

Farmers, consumers, and rural communities deserve a regulatory framework that is transparent, comprehensive, and grounded in the best available independent science.

Action REG Federal USDA-2026-0133-0001 Modified Organisms Subject to the Plant Protection Act

GMO/Toxin Free USA

The USDA’s regulatory framework for genetically engineered/genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is inadequate, outdated, and fails to reflect the full body of peer-reviewed scientific research, knowledge, and real-world experience accumulated since the first GMO crops were widely planted and commercialized in the mid-1990s.

Specifically, USDA regulations for genetically modified plants have largely been a facade since the beginning, focusing on a single question before approving a GMO crop: Does it pose a plant pest risk to other plants?

By focusing almost exclusively on this narrow question, USDA enacted a regulatory regime purposely designed to miss the bigger picture. The most widely planted GMO crops today are engineered to tolerate herbicides, and these crops are designed to be used with those chemicals. An herbicide-tolerant GMO seed is not planted in isolation—it is part of a system that drives herbicide use.

Therefore, the scientifically sound question should be: does this GMO plant system pose a risk to other plants, animals, human health or the environment if grown as intended—with the herbicides? There have been countless documented cases of herbicide-tolerant crops causing damage to neighboring non-GMO and organic farms, orchards, home gardens, and native trees due to herbicide drift, as well as threats to human health, endangered species, pollinators, biodiversity and our environment.

Dicamba-tolerant soybeans and cotton are prime examples of this. In recent years, there have been tens of thousands of dicamba-drift damage cases across the U.S. An estimated 5 million or more acres of non-target crops, backyard gardens, trees, and public spaces were injured by dicamba drift between 2016 and 2021. The USDA previously estimated that damage reached as much as 15 million acres of non-tolerant soybeans in 2018 alone. And by EPA’s own admission,  the damage has been significantly underreported.
For crops engineered to withstand herbicides, the reliance on a single herbicide can lead to natural selection in the wild. Certain weeds develop immunity to the herbicide (e.g., glyphosate resistance), which then requires more aggressive, multiple-herbicide treatments that can drift to affect surrounding, non-tolerant vegetation, humans, wildlife and ecosystems.

The herbicide-tolerant crops and the associated herbicides cannot be evaluated separately. It is a single system.

Plant incorporated protectants (PIPs)—insecticides incorporated into plant DNA—have resulted in insect resistance. Just like chemical insecticides, target pests can rapidly develop evolutionary resistance to the plant-made pesticide, resulting in the use of more insecticide spraying. 
The genetically engineered PIPs, as well as the herbicides used on herbicide-tolerant crops, have been linked to human health harms including leaky gut, damage to the microbiome and immune system, cancer, reproductive and developmental harms as well as other adverse health impacts. Claims of substantial equivalence between GMO and Non-GMO have been disproven by peer-reviewed science.

Today, genetic engineering in agriculture extends far beyond the herbicide-tolerant and insecticide-producing GMO crops that first entered the market. New techniques such as gene editing and synthetic biology come with the same risks and are being used to create an expanding array of genetically engineered plants, animals, and microbes for use in farming, food production, and environmental applications. Many of these organisms are entirely novel, yet they are often reviewed under regulatory frameworks that were developed decades ago and were never designed to address the unique risks and complexities of these emerging technologies.

Deregulation and voluntary “non-regulatory solutions,” as the USDA puts it, are not acceptable. The USDA must update and strengthen GMO regulations using all of the available independent peer-reviewed science and the decades of case studies showing harm.

Strengthen GMO regulations

The USDA’s current approach to regulating genetically engineered/genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is outdated and does not reflect the extensive scientific literature and real-world experience accumulated over the past three decades.

Historically, USDA oversight of GMO crops has focused primarily on whether a genetically engineered plant poses a direct plant pest risk. This narrow regulatory lens ignores the broader agricultural systems in which many GMO crops are designed to function. The majority of GMO acreage in the United States consists of crops engineered to tolerate herbicides or produce insecticidal compounds. These traits are intended to be used in conjunction with specific chemical inputs and therefore cannot be meaningfully evaluated in isolation.

A scientifically credible regulatory framework should assess the foreseeable impacts of GMO crops as they are actually used in agricultural settings. Herbicide-tolerant crops have contributed to widespread herbicide use and have been associated with documented damage to neighboring farms, orchards, gardens, native vegetation, and wildlife habitat through herbicide drift. The consequences extend beyond plants and include potential effects on biodiversity, pollinators, endangered species, ecosystems, and human communities.

The widespread adoption of dicamba-tolerant crops provides a clear example of the shortcomings of USDA's current approach. Millions of acres of non-target vegetation have been damaged by dicamba drift, demonstrating that the impacts of these cropping systems extend far beyond the fields in which they are planted.

Similarly, insecticidal GMO crops containing plant-incorporated protectants (PIPs) have contributed to the evolution of resistant insect populations, creating pressures for additional pest-control measures. These outcomes should be considered when evaluating the long-term sustainability and environmental consequences of GMO technologies.

The emergence of gene editing, synthetic biology, and other advanced genetic engineering techniques further underscores the need for a modernized regulatory framework. Many of these products are novel and present questions that were not contemplated when existing regulations were developed decades ago.

USDA should strengthen—not weaken—its oversight of genetically engineered organisms and ensure that regulatory decisions are based on comprehensive, independent, peer-reviewed science and the lessons learned from decades of commercial GMO cultivation.

Current GMO regulations are inadequate

The USDA’s GMO regulatory framework fails to adequately protect the environment because it evaluates genetically engineered crops too narrowly and ignores many of their predictable real-world impacts.

For decades, USDA regulation has centered on determining whether a genetically engineered plant is likely to act as a plant pest. While that question may be relevant, it is far from sufficient. Modern GMO crops are often designed to function within larger agricultural systems that rely heavily on herbicides or built-in insecticidal traits. Evaluating the crop while disregarding those intended uses results in an incomplete assessment of environmental risk.

The environmental consequences of herbicide-tolerant cropping systems are well documented. Herbicide drift has damaged neighboring farms, organic operations, home gardens, trees, and wildlife habitat. Increased herbicide use has also raised concerns regarding impacts on pollinators, endangered species, biodiversity, and ecosystem health.

Dicamba-resistant crops illustrate these concerns. The widespread injury caused by dicamba drift demonstrates that environmental harms can occur even when products are used according to their approved labels. Such outcomes should have been anticipated and incorporated into regulatory evaluations.

In addition, insect-resistant GMO crops containing plant-incorporated protectants can contribute to the development of resistant insect populations, undermining long-term effectiveness and increasing pressure for additional pesticide use.

The rapid expansion of gene-edited crops and synthetic biology applications makes comprehensive oversight more important than ever. New technologies should not be granted exemptions simply because existing regulations were written before these technologies existed.

The USDA should adopt a precautionary, science-based regulatory framework that evaluates the cumulative environmental impacts of genetically engineered organisms and the agricultural systems in which they are intended to operate.

GMO regulations must be updated and strengthened

The USDA’s current regulatory framework for genetically engineered organisms is outdated and insufficient to address the potential impacts of modern biotechnology on public health, agriculture, and the environment.

Since the commercialization of the first GMO crops in the 1990s, scientific understanding of genetic engineering technologies and their associated agricultural systems has expanded dramatically. Yet USDA regulations remain largely focused on whether a GMO plant poses a plant pest risk. This limited inquiry fails to account for the broader consequences of how genetically engineered crops are actually used.

Many GMO crops are engineered specifically to withstand herbicides or produce insecticidal compounds. As a result, they are inseparable from the pesticides associated with their use. Evaluating the crop while excluding consideration of the accompanying pesticide system does not provide a complete picture of potential risks.

The widespread adoption of herbicide-tolerant crops has been accompanied by herbicide drift incidents, weed resistance, and increasing reliance on multiple herbicides. These outcomes can affect neighboring farms, rural communities, ecosystems, and food production systems.

Likewise, insecticidal GMO crops have contributed to the development of resistant pest populations, creating challenges similar to those associated with conventional insecticides.

Emerging technologies such as gene editing and synthetic biology raise additional concerns because they enable the creation of increasingly complex and novel organisms. Regulatory frameworks developed decades ago are not equipped to adequately evaluate these innovations.

Consumers, farmers, and communities deserve a regulatory system that considers all reasonably foreseeable impacts of genetically engineered organisms. USDA should update its regulations to reflect current science, real-world experience, and the public interest rather than continuing to rely on a limited and outdated model of oversight and limited information provided by the biotech corporations that profit from commercialization of these novel organisms.

GMO regulations are outdated and insufficient

GMO regulations have failed to keep pace