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:2, Interesting)
You mean like people who keep claiming that "evolution is just a theory", and that trickle-down economics work?
Re:victory against science (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
In Oregon they call that "being californicated".
Re:victory against science (Score:2, Interesting)
I would say that creationists and climate change deniers are both associated with republicans the same way anti-GMOs are associated with democrats. But I'd say that creationists and climate change deniers are far, far more dangerous than anti-GMO morons.
Read the fine article (Score:4, Interesting)
You could have read the fine article, which nicely mentions "overuse of pesticides". The current reason to use GMO is raised pesticide/herbicide resistance, which naturally means that farmers are encouraged to go overkill with Roundup and co. to kill of everything else in the area. AFAIK it has also been shown that the poisons used accumulate within the plants, sadly the only health study on that point I know of has been unreliable (the lab animals used hat a naturally high chancer rate).
So while GMOs may not be responsible for the harm done to humans, the pesticides/herbicides sold as part of the package - the only reason GMOs are currently used - are responsible for killing of local plants and insects. It might be overly broad, but it is based on reality and facts.
Re:More accurate headline (Score:4, Interesting)
Very likely, yes. Do you want to go back to a world before penicilin?
Weeds will keep evolving to beat whatever you throw at them: If they didn't, they would be extinct. If anything, we should invest more in genetic research, so taht we can have a bigger advantage over weeds and diseases. Feel free to regulate their application of said technology though, just like we could regulate antibiotic use on farm animals.
Authority (Score:5, Interesting)
According to this [wikipedia.org] regulating GMO's is a federal responsibility. Will the ban and/or fines even hold up in court?
United States regulatory policy is governed by the Coordinated Framework for Regulation of Biotechnology This regulatory policy framework that was developed under the Presidency of Ronald Reagan to ensure safety of the public and to ensure the continuing development of the fledgling biotechnology industry without overly burdensome regulation.The policy as it developed had three tenets: "(1) U.S. policy would focus on the product of genetic modification (GM) techniques, not the process itself, (2) only regulation grounded in verifiable scientific risks would be tolerated, and (3) GM products are on a continuum with existing products and, therefore, existing statutes are sufficient to review the products."
I am pretty sure that a ban with no scientific review or investigation would fail tenet #2.
Re:victory against science (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:victory against science (Score:3, Interesting)
I have zero problem with GMO foods as a general matter. "GMO" means as much to me as the word "chemicals"; it's devoid of substantive meaning.
That said, anti-GMO activists are not supporting malnutrition. We don't need GMOs to solve food shortages. We have more than enough food. It's a distribution problem, and where solving distribution is intractable existing agricultural methods can be used. Africa, for example, had more than enough food in the 1960s and 1970s; it wasn't until Western agribusiness put all the domestic farmers out of business that we ended up with famines in the 1980s, and that's because most poor nations are incapable of adapting to rich nations' sophisticated food management systems.
The reason why Western scientists push GMO crops to help solve international nutrition problems is because GMO is what Western scientists spend all their time on. GMOs aren't necessary, they're simply the tool most familiar to rich nations. It's like a guy who spends his day job writing Java code; guess what kind of language he'll prefer when doing open source projects at home. Java, most likely. Does that mean Java is the best language out there? Even if it is, that doesn't mean others are sufficient for any particular task.
Re:going after GMO is like banning screwdrivers (Score:5, Interesting)
"that tomato strain was genetically modified, by plasmid insertion, -then- cross-pollinated with most other major strains. or... are you willing to say generation 1 of GMO is GMO whereas generation 3 isn't?"
Since there are no genetically modified tomatoes available commercially [wikipedia.org], GP is correct.
Further, even when the "Flavr-Savr" tomato was being produced experimentally, the claim that it used fish genes was actually a confusion between that and other research. So: no, your tomato is not GMO in the sense being discussed here, which is the insertion of foreign genes from other organisms.
Hawaii is a special case, and it is particularly sensitive to invasive organisms. It is perfectly reasonable for them to be extra-cautious at this time. They are in a particularly strong place from which to say, "If there is even a small chance it is bad, let's not do it."