Last July the STOP GE Trees Campaign joined the attorneys at the Center for Food Safety and the Center for Biological Diversity, as well as the Sierra Club and the Dogwood Alliance to sue the US Department of Agriculture over their approval of the request by GE tree company ArborGen to plant over a quarter of a million non-native, invasive GE eucalyptus trees across seven southern US states.

On June 22 in Miami we took part in a court-ordered mediation with the USDA to see if there was any possibility to “settle” the lawsuit out of court.

There was no settlement.

We will now continue with summary judgment briefing, with a hearing likely sometime in the fall.

What this now means is that we need to move ahead with our other ambitious plans for 2011 and 2012 to stop the commercial or large-scale release of GE trees.