Critical Observer

HAWAII FIELDS TO BE INFILTRATED WITH GMO BANANAS

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<span style="font-size: x-large; font-weight: normal;">The <a href="http://hdoa.hawaii.gov/meetings-reports/" style="background-color: transparent; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #194e8e; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Hawaii State Department of Agriculture</a> conducted an impromptu meeting to allow biotech to ‘field test’ genetically modified bananas. This is of great concern to the people of Hawaii, and no public notice was made of the meeting until very recently. UH received a $1.5 million research grant from the US federal government to develop a GMO banana variety, even though Hawaii residents have made it very clear they oppose GM crops.</span></h5>
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Hector Valenzuela of the Dept. of Plant and Environmental Protection Sciences, CTAHR, UH-Manoa has explained that even though bananas propagate asexually, widespread contamination is likely to occur in the state through people sharing propagating materials – called suckers or keikis – with friends, or neighbors.</div>
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The <a href="http://hawaiiseed.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Papaya-Contamination-Report.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #194e8e; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">experience with the GMO Rainbow papaya</a> shows that UH and GMO papaya farmers have been incapable of containing GMOs within the boundary of their farms resulting in the widespread contamination of non-GMO areas throughout the state.</div>
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Research needs to be conducted to determine potential health, environmental, economic, and social impacts from the release of a GMO banana variety in Hawaii, yet the biotech industry is set to unleash the GM banana variety without any of this.</div>
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Little or no research has been conducted by UH to find alternative ecologically-based, low input, practices to manage the bunchy top virus in Hawaii.</div>
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IslandBreath <a href="http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2015/10/sneaking-in-gmo-bananas.html" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #194e8e; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">reports that</a> they are trying to ‘sneak’ the GM banana.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Say 'no' to GM bananas!</span></h2>
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<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: proxima-nova; font-size: 19px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 30px; max-width: 100%; padding: 10px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This article originally appeared at <a href="http://naturalsociety.com/hawaii-test-fields-to-be-illegally-infiltrated-with-gm-bananas/" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #194e8e; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Natural Society</a>.</em></div>

HAWAII FIELDS TO BE INFILTRATED WITH GMO BANANAS

The Hawaii State Department of Agriculture conducted an impromptu meeting to allow biotech to ‘field test’ genetically modified bananas...

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Pesticide Exposure From GMO Crops in Hawaii

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Hawaiians have seen firsthand that people near agrichemical companies’ test plots of genetically engineered (GMO) crops are at increased risk of being exposed to toxic chemicals that drift off the fields. And they’re fighting back.<br />
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State and local representatives in Hawaii are working to pass laws to protect vulnerable communities from the harmful pesticides blanketing nearby GMO crops designed to be herbicide-tolerant.<br />
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In a recent article (Aug. 23) in The Guardian, journalist Christopher Pala wrote about the town of Waimea on the island of Kauai, downhill from some of the test plots, where a middle school and a hospital are less than 2,000 feet from a Syngenta test field. Pala noted that the companies are not required to disclose much about the chemicals they’re testing as they develop new varieties of herbicide-resistant crops.<br />
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In the contiguous 48 states, EWG analyses have shown that 3,200 elementary schools and 12,000 churches are located near fields where GMO corn and soybean are likely grown. And a report by the Center for Food Safety in May indicated that those numbers are probably underestimates, given the number of communities near GMO corn and soybean test plots in Hawaii.<br />
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The Center’s report found that agrichemical giants taking advantage of Hawaii’s extended growing season spray 17 times more pesticides on fields on the island of Kauai than on cornfields on the U.S. mainland.<br />
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Right now, Hawaiians are battling agrichemical companies at the county level, in the state house and in the courts over issues of pesticide disclosure, buffer zones and restrictions on GMO cultivation. Their efforts could be fruitless, however, if the U.S. Senate passes a bill – dubbed by opponents the “Deny Americans the Right to Know” or “DARK” Act – that could preempt any Hawaiian GMO laws that get on the books. If Hawaii or any other state were to pass a law requiring GMO foods to be labeled – as Connecticut, Maine and Vermont have done – the DARK Act, which has already passed the House, would block the state from implementing it.<br />
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One reason nine out of 10 consumers – regardless of political party, gender, education or race – want mandatory GMO labeling is the growing concern over the escalating amounts of toxic weed killers needed to grow the vast majority of GMO crops.<br />
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No matter where they shop, people should have the right to know which foods were made with GMOs, as consumers in 64 other countries already do.<br />
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By Mary Ellen Kustin, Senior Policy Analyst of EWG.org

Pesticide Exposure From GMO Crops in Hawaii

Hawaiians have seen firsthand that people near agrichemical companies’ test plots of genetically engineered (GMO) crops are at increased ...

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HAWAII’S SPIKE IN BIRTH DEFECTS PUTS FOCUS ON GM CROPS

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Pediatrician Carla Nelson remembers catching sight of the unusually pale newborn, then hearing an abnormal heartbeat through the stethoscope and thinking that something was terribly wrong.<br />
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The baby was born minutes before with a severe heart malformation that would require complex surgery. What worried her as she waited for the ambulance plane to take the infant from Waimea, on the island of Kauai, to the main children’s hospital in Honolulu, on another Hawaiian island, was that it was the fourth one shehad seen in three years.<br />
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In all of Waimea, there have been at least nine in five years, she says, shaking her head. That’s more than 10 times the national rate, according to analysis by local doctors.<br />
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Nelson, a Californian, and other local doctors find themselves in the eye of a storm swirling for the past three years around the Hawaiian archipelago over whether a major cash crop on four of the six main islands, corn that’s been genetically modified to resist pesticides, is a source of prosperity, as the companies claim – or of birth defects and illnesses, as the doctors and many others suspect.<br />
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by CHRISTOPHER PALA | THE GUARDIAN | AUGUST 24, 2015

HAWAII’S SPIKE IN BIRTH DEFECTS PUTS FOCUS ON GM CROPS

Pediatrician Carla Nelson remembers catching sight of the unusually pale newborn, then hearing an abnormal heartbeat through the stethosc...

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