HAWAII - A SECRET GM PARADISE OF FRANKENFOOD

MUST SEE FILM:
Islands at Risk: Genetic Engineering in Hawaii
A film by Earthjustice, 2006
The film can be viewed in its entirety online at:
http://www.earthjustice.org/news/multimedia/video1/page.jsp?itemID=29841806

To purchase the DVD:
http://www.namaka.com/catalog/environment/genetic.html

Review by Claire Robinson (excerpted review from http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8064)

How did a place so blessed by nature (Hawaii) find itself targeted, in the chilling words of one activist, as a "national and international sacrifice area for biotech and genetic modification research"? How did its fertile fields get to be occupied by monocultures of experimental plants with Guantanamo-style bags over their heads? Answer: by stealth. A film by the Hawaiian nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice, Islands at Risk, features an interview with local hunter and activist Walter Ritte, who says, "We knew nothing about GMO until one day there was a rumour that there were strange things being grown in our cornfields. The whole farming community was changing and we didn't even know." In a process subsidized by US taxpayers and assisted by the state government of Hawaii, the islands' soils have become the open-air laboratories of chemical and biotech giants DuPont, Monsanto, Dow, and Syngenta, for the testing of GM crops.

The film shows that the entire enterprise has been cloaked in secrecy from the start. Even lawmakers are not allowed to know what is being planted and where. What is known is that on the island of Oahu, over 2000 field tests of GM crops have taken place. These include pharma plants producing AIDS, hepatitis and swine diarrhoea vaccines, and crops producing industrial compounds. And the experimental fields are within spitting distance of residential areas, schools and old people's homes. The industry claims it's safe as there is no rising incidence of disease. But this is exposed in the film as a lie. Lorrin Pang, MD and consultant to the World Health Organization, points out that the ten years since GMOs have been introduced have seen rises in prematurity, cancers, attention deficit disorder, and adult onset diabetes in children. Pang adds that no one can draw any conclusions as to the cause, as GMOs in food are not labeled.