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UCLA Journal to Publish Article by Blake Denton ’08 on Genetically Modified Crops
In fact, “the United States has written off concerns about biotechnology and continued to promote its application to crops,” according to Blake Denton ’08. He is the author of an article on the first federal decision ever to address the practice of producing GM crops for pharmaceutical use, or “biopharming,” and its implications for environmental advocacy. The article, “Regulating the Regulators: The Increased Role for the Federal Judiciary in Monitoring the Debate over Genetically Modified Crops,” will be published in a forthcoming issue of the UCLA Journal of Environmental Law & Policy. Denton, who has distinguished himself academically, holds both a Prince and Rosenthal Scholarship, is a member of the Moot Court Honor Society, and has served as the Articles Editor of the Brooklyn Law Review. He has interned with Hon. Cheryl l. Pollak, U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of New York, and he is working this summer as an associate at the firm of Latham & Watkins LLP. Raised in Marlboro, NJ, Denton is a graduate of Rutgers University. He credits the Review’s Notes and Comments Editor, Meaghan Atkinson, as well as his faculty advisor, Professor Christopher Serkin, with helping him shape the article. In Center for Food Safety v. Johanns, the recent decision reviewed by Denton, the U.S. District Court in Hawaii decided that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) illegally approved field trials of drug-producing GM crops throughout Hawaii without considering the effects to endangered species and without conducting any environmental review. The court said this was a violation of the nation’s environmental protection laws. Denton’s article contends that “legal limitations” imposed on those who create GM crops “have been extremely lax, and often go unenforced by the executive agencies entrusted with regulating” them—the USDA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Federal Drug and Food Administration (FDA). In Center for Food Safety, the court “premised liability against those responsible for regulating biopharming under an alternative rationale…namely, that a congressional act can limit an agency’s discretion even if the statute does not address the agency by name.” So while the USDA, FDA and EPA “are granted great deference in interpreting their responsibilities under the statutes dealing with GM crops, they do not have the same leeway in interpreting their duties under other acts,” such as the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Denton points out that violations by executive agencies of these two acts are prevalent in the realm of biotechnology. Therefore, he notes, more suits are likely to be brought in the coming years against the agencies for neglect of statutory duties by opponents of GM crops. “The federal judiciary will likely come to play a greater role in forcing the agencies to assume accountability. Opponents of genetic engineering are likely to start utilizing the federal judiciary to make their voices heard.”
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