Anti-GMO Activists Win Victory On Hawaiian Island 510
biobricks writes "New York Times reports on how the county council on the Big Island of Hawaii banned GMOs. 'Urged on by Margaret Wille, the ban’s sponsor, who spoke passionately of the need to “act before it’s too late,” the Council declined to form a task force to look into such questions before its November vote. But Mr. Ilagan, 27, sought answers on his own. In the process, he found himself, like so many public and business leaders worldwide, wrestling with a subject in which popular beliefs often do not reflect scientific evidence. At stake is how to grow healthful food most efficiently, at a time when a warming world and a growing population make that goal all the more urgent.'"
Re:victory against science (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't equate pseudoscience-believing hippies with Republicans.
I'm from Hawaii (specifically the Big Island), and that state (and county) is dominated by Democrats who are very, very far from being creationist Republicans. Heck, even our Republicans are more liberal than a lot of mainland Democrats. So yeah - totally pseudoscience hippies. We have a saying (due to our macadamia nut orchards) that we send our nuts (macadamia) to the mainland and they send their nuts (california hippies) to us.
Re:Wrong again (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/261179.php
Re:More accurate headline (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, GMO's may be totally healthy, but the real issue is who controls the GMO market. It's definitely not healthy if only few companies control the food chain. The companies are even happy to restrict the reuse of the seeds. This is unnatural, but of course natural in terms of making profit. Also the aim to create food for only human use (GMO crops that repel everything else) will have an impact on biodiversity. Diversity is the natural mechanism to cope with the changing conditions, and the lack of diversity will polarize the eco-system, which would as a whole weaken.
Once it becomes possible to create nutrition in closed production plants the fields can be freed to be at their natural state. Artificially produced food is in the end as natural as GMO.
Re:victory against science (Score:5, Informative)
These are the same people who think that eating an "alkalizing" diet and drinking "alkalized water"
That's an overly broad and unfair characterization. Everyone seems to be ignoring that companies are not required to prove with sufficient rigor that GMO crops are adequately safe.
The FDA requires new pharmaceuticals to undergo years of testing. In contrast, GMO crops are assumed to be safe because they 'closely approximate' their originating crop. That's a foolish assumption.
Re:victory against science (Score:5, Informative)
Plus, the PATENTS! It's not about science, it's about freedom of seed! Banning GMOs is an important first step to getting rid of life-patent laws. Seeds should be part of the public trust. If they become public again, I'd have no problem with GMOs that were open to people looking at them and doing real research on them
If you'd read the article, or paid any attention at all to the subject, you'd know that many GMOs are unencumbered by IP laws and/or were always intended to be given away. This includes both golden rice (which was specifically intended for the third world - developed nations don't really have endemic vitamin A deficiency) and virus-resistant papayas, which Hawaii currently grows. Banning them does nothing at all to advance the cause of open science.
Re:going after GMO is like banning screwdrivers (Score:4, Informative)
I have no problem with people choosing to eat GMO crops. I would personally rather set the seeds in the sun and let UV light cause faster differentiation for my crop selective breeding program than have patented seeds, and thus have far better diversity than the pesticide resistant monoculture of GMO. The strive for absolute maximum yield is as horrid as the strive for absolute maximum security or absolute maximum progress. These moronic absolutist drives marginalize proper cautions and acceptable risk and lead to bad and/or uninformed decisions about the food we'll eat, what protections are actually needed, and the lifestyles we live.
I would rather eat food that wasn't grown with pesticides or herbicides sprayed on them even if it is more expensive and the ecosystem reclaims a bit of the crop -- I consider it the cost of doing business with nature, renting her land. The "cheaper" poisoned crop is just hiding the cost elsewhere in the environment and my body. No one should get to dictate what my acceptable risk is worth in either extreme -- They do not have my best interest in mind. I need information to make informed decisions. All of my food I get from my local farmers market or grow myself; I have been to the farms whence my food comes. I can make two pizzas with all organic ingredients: yeast from the air, vegetables from my garden, oils from local olives, salt from the sea, cheeses made locally, and flour I ground myself -- all in the same amount of time it takes for you to get pizza delivered. The fresh taste is phenomenal, and better for you (less fats, salts and preservatives).
I would love to be able to maintain my food preference while shopping at a supermarket, but thanks to the GMO lobby I can't. The GMO lobbyists prevent me from making an informed choice by lobbying against labeling of GMO food -- Or even preventing those that label their products as non-GMO. This is as terrible as the state telling me I don't need to know what the NSA is doing because it's good for me. Fuck that shit. I want choice. GMO companies are actively anti-choice. I'm anti-GMO company, being anti-GMO food is an unfortunate but necessary outgrowth of their anti-informed consumer stance.
I also don't take any drugs that haven't been on the market for more than 10 years because I've seen that longer term testing is frequently needed. I buy the latest computing technology because I don't put that buggy crap in my body. If it were a medical device going inside me, I'd want the source code, and I'd want years of testing to work out the bugs, some assurances that the shit doesn't have a trivial exploit vector. I fight against all this "it's good for you just trust us" information disparity bullshit in our current culture, not just with GMO crops.
GMO isn't the only way to do business. If it didn't exist and neither did pesticides, guess what? The economy would adjust the cost and price of food. Hey, here's a thought: Competition is good. GMO companies are anti-competitive. Yes you can pay engineers to invent things and call that progress, but you also miss out on the natural progresses achieved through good old mutation and selection if you seek to exclude the natural methods of crop growing -- Which GMO companies and lobbies do. Anti-competition is bad for crops for the same reason normalizing the methods of production is bad for business: Mono-cultures are "anti-progressive", you idiot. Get this through your fool head: They don't want what's best for us, they want what's best for them at any cost to us; They'll deffer as much of that cost to us and the environment as they can get away with. You shouldn't trust them by default. Where's your scientific skepticism? My standard of proof is higher and you call me anti-progressive? THAT's anti-progressive, moron.
Re:victory against science (Score:5, Informative)
I just thought of the other analogy: the Soviet Union, for all of its many unredeemable flaws, did manage to rack up some impressive scientific accomplishments. But not in biology or agriculture, because its leaders made a conscious choice to embrace Lysenko's pseudo-science and demonize genetics. The result was to set back progress by decades, because an entire generation was trained to be scientifically ignorant in that particular field. Russia still produces some excellent mathematicians and physicists, but it's never recovered in biology and medicine.
(Another contemporary example would be Hitler's opposition to much of physics research as being "too Jewish", and his own support for less rigorous science, but it was ultimately his anti-Semitism that caused the most damage to Germany's scientific community, rather than his embrace of pseudoscience.)
Re:victory against science (Score:3, Informative)
Ok, then explain the thugs who tried to destroy the GE wheat trial at Rothamsted [bbc.co.uk], or the ones who did destroy the GE potatoes at the University of Leeds. [timeshighe...tion.co.uk]
The anti-Monsanto is just a convenient attempt to justify anti-science bullshit (and even that card is factually weak). That's why there's opposition to Golden Rice, the Rainbow papaya, The Arctic apple, and every other non-Monsanto GMO. If it was just about Monsanto, that wouldn't happen, but it does.