Bill 361 – Getting Closer
The bill introduced to ban GMO kalo and coffee is getting closer to final approval. After the Council approved the Bill back in September, one more vote is required before it goes before the mayor for signing. This bill is a crucial step in the war against GMO’s. It will prevent people from bringing in and growing GMO coffee and taro in the county of Hawaii.
http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/articles/2008/10/07/local/local04.txt
Personally, I’m appalled that the Chamber of Commerce was at the vote to protest the bill. With the devastating loss of business in the Papaya industry, they should know better and shame on them for sticking to the glossy GMO brochures and not truly seeking the welfare of the farmers and their crops. They sang the same old song we hear over and over again from the GMO proponents. They just want to feed the people and have disease free plants. Well, folks – diseases are not static – you’ll never have disease free plants. You may breed or alter one to be resistant one year but the next it’ll be sick again.
Whenever you disrupt the natural cycle of adaptation, you render yourself vulnerable to unseen variables. When using the safe forms of genetic manipulation by using standard breeding practices, you also don’t have the side issues of safety to fret over that you have when you shotgun in genes from disparate life forms – something the GMO industry always tries to sweep under the carpet.
Anything GMO does, breeding can do better. And safer. After all, if GMO were so safe, why the campaign to hide it from the labels of our food? If people don’t want to eat GMO, they should have the choice not to – but that choice does not exist unless you grow 100% of your own food. This is very wrong and the FDA has failed abysmally in this matter. But that’s for another discussion.
Kalo has been cultivated for over 1000 years on the Islands, and even longer elsewhere and only recently have diseases been an issue. Diseases happen – but it’s not a weakness of kalo – it’s a weakness in farming methods and techniques and often in the lack of water. We’re the problem, not the kalo. Fix us and the kalo will be fine. Modifying the kalo’s genetics does nothing more than put the ownership of it and the control of it in the hands of one rather than the many as it should be. It is solely a play for power and revenue.
GMO’s are unneeded in the fight for disease or productivity. We have the tools needed already. The only purpose for GMO’s are to own a crop and control those who cultivate that crop. He who owns the most crops controls the food of the world. There is nothing beneficial about that and we are the losers in that game the GMO industry is playing. Whenever GMO’s get a foot-hold, choices start to wither away until all you have is zero diversity. The corn and canola industry are pretty much there already stateside. Even organic seeds cannot be guaranteed GMO free because the GMO pollution is so ubiquitious.
Let us hope then that this step leads to the next and ultimately a GMO free Hawaii. Next is a GMO free US…
MikeV