A nonprofit organization called the Center for Food Safety filed suit on Tuesday against a division of the US Department of Agriculture for allegedly not responding properly to their requests for information about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The food advocacy organization is suing the department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS. The group claims that APHIS did not give a “timely final response” to at least 29 requests or appeals through FOIA, and that in about a third of those instances the agency did not provide any response.

Among their complaints, the group charges that APHIS did not respond to a request pertaining to GMO sorghum and did not respond in a timely way to three requests about GMO wheat. It also cites four-to-five year delays to FOIA requests regarding GMO bentgrass.

“APHIS has a track record of irresponsible and inadequate regulation of [GMO] crops,” the organization’s staff attorney, Cristina Stella, said in a statement. “In the absence of thorough government oversight, public access to information about these crops becomes all the more critical.”

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