Mayor Billy Kenoi signed Bill 113 on December 5, 2013. Below is the message he sent to the Hawai’i County Council:
Aloha, Chair Yoshimoto and Members:
On Nov. 19, 2013 the Hawai‘i County Council adopted Bill 113 Draft 3 adding a new article relating to Genetically Engineered Crops and Plants, and on Nov. 21, 2013 delivered the bill to me for my consideration. After careful deliberation and discussions with members of my administration and the public, I am signing Bill 113.
Our community has a deep connection and respect for our land, and we all understand we must protect our island and preserve our precious natural resources. We are determined to do what is right for the land because this place is unlike any other in the world. With this new ordinance we are conveying that instead of global agribusiness corporations, we want to encourage and support community-based farming and ranching.
The debate over this bill has at times been divisive and hurtful, and some of our hard-working farmers who produce food for our community have been treated disrespectfully. We are determined to protect every farmer and rancher. Agriculture on Hawai‘i Island will continue to grow with county assistance, investment and support. That commitment includes initiatives such as the public-private partnership to improve and expand the Pa‘auilo Slaughterhouse to support our grass-fed beef industry, and the launch of the Kapulena Agricultural Park, the largest agricultural park in the state on 1,739 acres of county-owned land. It also includes support for innovative training programs to grow the farmers of the future, and to train veterans to engage in agriculture on Hawaiian Home Lands, and the introduction and advancement of Korean Natural Farming as a sustainable method of producing healthier crops and livestock. It includes completion of the first-in-the-state Food Self-Sufficiency Baseline Study of Hawai‘i Island to measure the island’s progress toward food self-sufficiency.
We are determined to reunite our farming community to create a stronger and more vibrant agricultural sector. It is time to end the angry rhetoric and reach out to our neighbors. Our farmers are essential to creating a wholesome and sustainable food supply on this island, and they deserve to be treated with respect and aloha. We must turn now to a meaningful, factual dialogue with one another.
With my approval of this bill, our administration will launch a year of research and data collection to investigate factual claims and to seek out new directions that farming in our community should take. This work will include an expanded database detailing the locations of both organic and conventional farms, the crops that are grown, more accurate estimates of the revenue earned from these enterprises, and the challenges our farmers face in meeting food safety and organic certification requirements. We will work with our farmers and our ranchers to carefully monitor the impacts of this bill over the next year to separate speculation and guesswork from the facts.
Today our communities expect that government will be as cautious as possible in protecting our food and water supplies. We all want to minimize impacts to the environment while also producing abundant, affordable food for local consumption. This ordinance expresses the desires and demands of our community for a safe, sustainable agricultural sector that can help feed our people while keeping our precious island productive and healthy.
Aloha,
William P. Kenoi
MAYOR
http://hawaiicountymayor.com/2013/12/05/mayor-kenoi-signs-bill-113/
Summary of Bill
Prohibition: No open air cultivation, propagation or development of genetically engineered crops or plants.
Exemptions: crops or plants being cultivated, propagated or developed prior to the effective date of this article are exempted provided locations or facilities are registered within 90 days.
GMO papaya in current and future locations is exempt provided commercial locations or facilities are registered.
Administration: Department of Research & Development, Agriculture Division.
Registration: $100 annual registration fee beginning within 90 days of the effective date of article.
Penalties: Violators fined $1000 per day, per location and responsible for costs of investigation, court and legal costs, and for damage to non-GE crops, plants, neighboring properties or water sources.
Tags: bill 113, Farm Wars, farmwars, food localization, genetic engineering, gmo ban, hawaii
Barbara H. Peterson
Rising to new heights of denial, in 2006, Bayer Crop Science claimed that the contamination of conventional rice by its experimental, unapproved GMO variety was an “act of God.”
Bayer conducted field tests of LL601 from 1999 to 2001 in Louisiana, then dropped the project without seeking government approval to market it. This year, LL601 was found to be widespread in U.S. long-grain rice, prompting Europe to cut off imports and throwing the rice futures market into turmoil.
Denying any culpability, the Bayer response variously blames the escape of its gene-altered variety of long-grain race, LL601, on “unavoidable circumstances which could not have been prevented by anyone”; “an act of God”; and farmers’ “own negligence, carelessness, and/or comparative fault.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/21/AR2006112101265.html
Farmers bought supposedly non-GMO seeds, and planted them. The resultant crop was found to be contaminated with the experimental variety. The contamination appears to have originated in the purchased seed. This means that the contamination issue is so widespread that no company dealing in conventional seed can claim that its seed stocks are GMO free. In fact, in the midst of the GMO Alfalfa contamination issue, Forage Genetics, supplier of the seed, and the USDA stated that up to 2% contamination should be expected and dismissed complaints out of hand. An “act of God,” evidently. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Barbara H. Peterson, Bayer, contamination, dupont, Farm Wars, farmwars, food safety, genetic engineering, GMO, monsanto, rice, seeds, syngenta
Barbara H. Peterson
Farm Wars
‘Tis the season to shop ‘til we drop, forget corporate greed, and spend like there is no tomorrow. ‘Tis the season to put aside all of our concerns about poisoned Chinese imports, and give in to the pressure from family and peers to celebrate with no thought for what we will have to give up to satisfy our craving for acceptance. After all, if you don’t celebrate Christmas, you are a Grinch! Well I say, Grinch THIS! Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Barbara H. Peterson, brainwashing, christmas, corporate america, debt, economy, farmwars farm wars, grinch, holiday, media manipulation, shopping
The editor of the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT), Dr A. Wallace Hayes, has decided to retract the study by the team of Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini, which found that rats fed a Monsanto genetically modified (GM) maize NK603 and tiny amounts of the Roundup herbicide it is grown with suffered severe toxic effects, including kidney and liver damage and increased rates of tumours and mortality.[1]
GMWatch believes FCT’s retraction of Prof Séralini’s paper to be illicit, unscientific, and unethical. It violates the guidelines for retractions in scientific publishing set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE),[2] of which FCT is a member.[3]
COPE guidelines state that the only grounds for a journal to retract a paper are:
- Clear evidence that the findings are unreliable due to misconduct (eg data fabrication) or honest error
- Plagiarism or redundant publication
- Unethical research.
Prof Séralini’s paper does not meet any of these criteria and Hayes admits as much. In his letter informing Prof Séralini of his decision [link here], Hayes concedes that an examination of Prof Séralini’s raw data showed “no evidence of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of the data” and nothing “incorrect” about the data. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: ethics, Farm Wars, farmwars, food and chemical toxicology, goodman, hayes, monsanto, science journal, seralini
Dave Hodges
December 1, 2013
The Koch brothers, Pat Stryker, Governor Hickenlooper and many of the Colorado Front Range mayors are all spearheading a movement to enslave the people of Colorado under the dictates of the United Nations created and inspired Agenda 21. Colorado, along with a 15 county area in Northern California and Southern Oregon comprise the beta test for Agenda 21 control over our most precious resources, namely, our water and our farmland.
The Koch Brothers Spearhead the Agenda 21 Takeover of Colorado
The Koch brothers have accomplished nothing. The brothers inherited their immense wealth from their father, Soviet oilman Fred Koch. Yet, these entitled Koch brothers feel that should have the right to dictate to everyone else how they should live.
Stalin actually brought in Fred Koch in order to develop the Soviet Union’s oil industry and now the sins of the father are being visited upon Fred’s sons as they are bringing a virulent form of communism to Colorado.
Koch Industries is the second largest corporation in the United States and true to form, they have no scruples. The Koch brothers are so corrupt that they have been caught stealing oil from protected Indian lands. This should be a hint to the people of Colorado as to what lies in their immediate future.
The Koch brothers espouse the Agenda 21 belief that you do not control your wealth, land, food, water and air, the state does on behalf of the corporations that they serve. For example, the Koch brothers are attacking social security. They have spent $29 million dollars to put forth the propaganda that social security is broke. It is only broke because Congress keeps raiding the funds. The Koch brothers want the retirement age to go to 70 years of age. They want to get their greedy hands on social security so that they can invest the funds on Wall Street, thus, risking everyone’s social security retirement funds. READ MORE…
Tags: Agenda 21, california, colorado, dave hodges, Farm Wars, farmland, farmwars, oregon, Water, water grab
Barb’s note: More manipulation of science by the king of deception, Monsanto. Anything that hints at a problem with GMO technology appears to be undergoing a deletion from the journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology. How can anything this journal publishes be considered valid at this point?
Points made by Dr E Ann Clark in a Canadian radio interview about the retraction of two papers suggesting potential harm from GM crops.
Dr Clark was formerly an Associate Professor in Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph where her specific interests included the risk assessment of genetically modified crops.
Clark Comments for Calgary Today, 29 Nov 2013
1. The issue is the retraction of papers suggesting potential harm to rats from GM crops.
2. I am a crop physiologist by training, so the content and methodology of the retracted papers – dealing with mammalian physiology, histopathology, and blood chemistry – are out of my area of expertise. Thus, I will comment solely on the issue of retraction of two papers by the refereed journal Food and Chemical Toxicology. Both papers, one by Gilles-Eric Seralini and colleagues in France and a second by Mezzomo and colleagues in Brazil, dealt with GM corn – the first with RR corn and Roundup itself, and the second with several types of Bt [toxin].
3. Both papers were submitted and went through the conventional process of peer review before being accepted and published in 2012. The Seralini paper was reviewed by 5 scientists, unlike the more typical 2 or 3 scientific reviewers.
4. Early in 2013 – after the two papers had been accepted and published – a wholly new position – deputy editor in biotechnology – was created at the FCT journal and filled by an allergy specialist from the University of Nebraska – Richard E. Goodman. As it happened, this specialist had worked for Monsanto in Regulatory Sciences from 1997 until July, 2004.
5. Within months of Dr. Goodman’s arrival at FCT, two papers which identified possible concerns with GM corn were retracted. Reasons for retraction are unknown for the Brazilian paper – which has since been published in another journal. READ MORE...
Tags: Farm Wars, farmwars, food and chemical toxicology, genetic engineering, GMO, goodman, hayes, monsanto, retraction, seralini
