The Effect of the Farmer Assurance Provision of the Consolidated and Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013 on Biodiversity and Global Food Security

A rider to a US law, the Consolidated and Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013, known as the Farmer Assurance Provision, encourages the large-scale genetic modification and global distribution of agricultural crops, thereby undermining the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations' determination that food security rests on biodiversity. The rider blocks the US Department of Agriculture's mandate to prohibit farmers from growing crops from biotechnological seeds where the courts have found that this farm practice may cause damage to human health and/or degrade the environment. Despite genetically modified organisms (GMOs) reducing unwanted traits in plants, the paper supports the UN's mission for biodiversity and that more long-term testing was (and is) needed for GMO products, developed from 1994 on, before a hasty piece of Congressional legislation as was made in this case.