Consumers reject GMO food

SUBHEAD: The surge in local food production has helped. Farmers are teaching each other, sharing seed, and building produce distribution opportunities.

 
Image above: GMO orange-frog computer collage illustration. From http://ukiahcommunityblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/lymeautism-group-blasts-genetically-modified-foods-as-dangerous  

By Jeri Di Pietro on 27 December 2009 in Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2009/12/consumers-reject-gmo-food.html)
 
After seven years of educating consumers and politicians, drumming up community support, and organizing volunteers, Hawai`i SEED is achieving the goal towards halting the introduction of any new GMO crops in Hawai`i. This year, Hawai`i County and Maui County passed laws creating a wide reaching ban that covers all aspects of taro experimentation, importation and development (laboratory, field and markets) on their islands.

Hawai`i County and Maui County also passed laws against pre-emptive legislation (protection of home rule). We hope for Kaua`i and Oahu to pass similar laws, to insure the purity of taro throughout the island chain. Big Island has also banned GMO coffee and passed a GMO food labeling law for their island.

Hawai`i has the infamous distinction of having more permits for GMO test fields than any other place in the world. The biotech crops being researched in Hawai`i are corn, soy, cotton, sunflower, papaya, rice, tobacco, and sugar.

Engineered plants are herbicide tolerant, and pesticide producing. These plants contain viral promoters, and they are antibiotic resistant. The current trend is modification to resist multiple pesticides. These “stacked trait” field tests mean multiple applications of chemical cocktails, to find upper tolerance levels.

All of this agricultural pollution is making its way into our ground water and ultimately our oceans. Farmers, parents and health conscious consumers find this unacceptable. People aware of the open air testing, the lack of human health data, the patenting of life forms, and the corporate control of seed, are appalled to see the hidden changes in our food supply. Our sentiments are being echoed all over the world.

The surge in local food production has helped our movement, it speaks to solutions. The models of crop diversity and sustainable farming practices are being exemplified daily. Farmers are teaching each other, sharing seed, and building produce distribution opportunities. We support the protection of farmer’s rights in the courts with the help of Earth Justice and the Center for Food Safety.

Hawai`i SEED will continue to promote a vision that embraces food sovereignty, pure food, healthy soil and water, and the traditional freedom to save your seed.

 Jeri Di Pietro
email: ofstone@aol.com
GMO Free Kaua`i PO Box 343 Koloa, HI 96756
(808) 651-1332
(808) 651-9603
hawaiiSEED.org

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