NY - HOPEFUL FOR PASSAGE OF GE FOOD LABELING BILL

NY bill would force labeling of ‘genetically engineered’ food

12:57 PM By Michael Gormley

ALBANY -- A measure with strong sponsors in the state Legislature would require that foods containing genetically engineered material be labeled that way to alert consumers.

“More and more people read labels and care about what they are putting in their mouths and their bodies, so I thought this bill that is simply a labeling bill would be a no-brainer,” said Sen. Kenneth LaValle  (R-Port Jefferson).

Apparently it isn’t.

LaValle and his co-sponsor on the bill, Assemb. Linda B. Rosenthal (D-Manhattan), said they are facing opposition from major food manufacturers including the Monsanto Co., General Mills and Kraft Foods. The bill’s sponsors also say some elements of the farm lobby and grocery store chains also oppose the measure, which Rosenthal said was unexpectedly defeated last year in the Assembly late in the session.

There was no immediate comment from the companies. Food companies have argued there is little evidence to prove that genetically engineered foods aren’t as safe as food grown without the manipulation. But consumer fears are driving a national effort to at least label such food products.

The bill states as much as 70 percent of groceries contain some genetically modified ingredients. Several states are proposing labeling bills and disclosure of genetically engineered foods is required in Japan,  South  Korea,  China, Australia,  New  Zealand,  Thailand,  Russia,  and the European Union, according to the bill.

Rosenthal said she and LaValle are fighting “the industry’s campaign of deceit.”

“We stand at an important moment in the debate to label GMOs.,” she said. “Worldwide, consumers have made it clear that want to label GMOs because they demand to know."

LaValle, who had once  proposed a ban on genetically engineered material in foods, said he’s optimistic.

“In my years in the Legislature, I have learned that every bill will have it’s own time,” LaValle said. “And we are very close for this bill to have its own time.”

He also cited the impact of growing support of several groups lobbying for the measure. They include Consumers Union, the New York Public Interest Research Group, the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter and the Organic Farming Association. The groups are sending fliers this week to residents in the district represented by Assemb. Edward Hennessey (D-Medford). He sits on the consumer affairs committee and is considered a key vote for the issue.

Hennessey didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Consumers have a right to know what’s in the food they eat,” said Jean Halloran, director of Food Policy Initiatives at Consumers Union.  “We hope that when Assembly member Hennessey’s constituents see what’s at stake, they will convince him to choose consumers over big corporations that want consumers to remain in the dark.”

The amount of a fine is yet to be determined. Companies would have two years to comply with the law if it’s passed.

The bill would require labeling of food or food products that contain a genetically engineered material or that are produced with a genetically engineered material, according to the legislation. The bill would also impose penalties for false labels and misbranding.

The process engineers foods such as corn, wheat, canola, apples and strawberries through genes to add or create new character traits within a plant. The bill states the engineered genes are introduced into the cells of plants through viruses, antibiotic resistant genes and bacteria.

Source:  http://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/spin-cycle-newsday-blogs-long-island-new-york-national-politics-1.812042/ny-bill-would-force-labeling-of-genetically-engineered-food-1.7899945

COMMONS POWER: RESIST MONOPOLIES=PRIVATIZATION OF PLANET EARTH

Published on Wednesday, April 30, 2014 by The Asian Age

Seeds of Freedom

If we have to survive as a species, we need to reclaim our commons — of seed, of climate, of knowledge and resist the privatisation of every aspect of life.

by Vandana Shiva

(Image: seedsaver.org)For thousands of years farmers, especially women, have evolved and bred seed freely with the help of nature to increase the diversity of what nature gave us and adopt it to the needs of different cultures. Biodiversity and cultural diversity have mutually shaped one another.

Every seed is an embodiment of millennia of nature’s evolution and centuries of farmers’ breeding. It is the distilled expression of the intelligence of the earth and intelligence of farming communities. Farmers have bred seeds for diversity, resilience, taste, nutrition, health and to adapt it for local agro-ecosystems.

In times of climate change we need the biodiversity of farmers’ varieties to adapt and evolve. Climate extremes are being experienced through more frequent and intense cyclones that bring salt water to the land. To develop resilience against cyclones, we need salt tolerant varieties of seeds, and we need them in the commons. Along coastal areas, farmers have evolved flood tolerant and salt tolerant varieties of rice such as Bhundi, Kalambank, Lunabakada, Sankarchin, Nalidhulia, Ravana, Seulapuni, Dhosarakhuda.

"By adding one new gene to the cell of a plant, corporations claimed they had invented and created the seed, the plant, and all future seeds that were now their property. In other words GMO meant 'God Move Over.'"

These seeds have been evolved by farmers and need to stay in the commons to gain resilience against climate change.

After the Orissa Supercyclone, Navdanya could distribute salt tolerant rice to farmers because we had conserved them as a commons in our community seed bank run by Kusum Mishra and Dr Ashok Panigrahi in Balasore, Orissa. Hence we were about to donate two truckloads of salt tolerant seeds to the farmers, who could not grow rice because of the sea salt deposited on their farms. As I have written in my book—Soil, Not Oil—40 per cent of the greenhouse gases come from an industrialised and globalised model of agriculture. Having created the crisis, corporations, who made profits from industrial agriculture, now want to turn the climate crisis they have contributed to into an opportunity to control climate resilient seeds and climate data. Corporations like Monsanto have taken 1,500 patents on climate resilient crops. With these very broad patents, Monsanto and other corporations can prevent access to climate resilient seeds after climate disasters since a patent is an exclusive right to produce, distribute and sell the patented product. This implies that the farmers’ right to save and share seed is now defined as “theft,” an “intellectual property crime”.

While nature and farmers have evolved the traits of climate resilience in seeds, corporations claim their role of creator; they declare that seeds are their “invention,” hence their patented property.

In times of climate change, such monopolies aggravate the disaster by blocking farmers’ rights to seeds they have evolved.

Hence, seed as a common good became a commodity of private seed companies, traded on the open market.

For example, on July 5, 2013, Justice Prabha Sridevi, chair of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board of India and D.P.S. Parmar, technical member, dismissed Monsanto’s appeal against the rejection of their patent application to the patent office for “Methods of enhancing stress tolerance in plants and methods thereof." The title of the patent was later amended to “A method of producing a transgenic plant, with increasing heat tolerance, salt tolerance or drought tolerance”.

Industrial breeding and intellectual property rights including patents on seed fail to recognise nature’s contributions and farmers’ contribution in giving us climate resilient crops. Just as the jurisprudence of Terre Nullius defined the land as empty, and allowed the takeover of territories by the European colonies, the jurisprudence of intellectual property rights related to life forms is, in fact, a jurisprudence of “Bio Nullius” — life empty of intelligence. The Earth is defined as dead matter, so it cannot create. And the farmers have empty heads so they cannot breed seeds.

The door to patents on seed and patents on life was opened by genetic engineering. By adding one new gene to the cell of a plant, corporations claimed they had invented and created the seed, the plant, and all future seeds that were now their property. In other words GMO meant “God Move Over.”

Section 3(j) of the Patents Act, 1970, recognises that life forms are not an invention and hence biological processes cannot be treated as inventions.

Today, this freedom of nature and culture to evolve is under violent and direct threat. The threat to seed freedom impacts the very fabric of human life and the life of the planet. Not only are corporations like Monsanto claiming patent monopolies on climate resilient seeds, they are also claiming monopoly on climate and weather data. Monsanto has bought the Climate Corporation, which controls vast data on climate for $1 billion.

"The threat to seed freedom impacts the very fabric of human life and the life of the planet."

Not only will Monsanto sell the chemicals and seeds adapted to their chemicals to farmers, they will also sell climate data. This is a strategy for total control of agriculture in times of climate change.

The National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005 was a legislative proposal forwarded in April 2005 by United States Senator Rick Santorum to bar the national weather service from issuing forecasts so that climate and weather services can be privatised. In effect, the knowledge of a cyclone or flood would only be provided to those who could pay.

The vision of the corporations and sadly the US government is to privatise every aspect of life — our seeds and biodiversity, the atmospheric commons, and the knowledge of the climate and weather as a public good.

At a time when the world needs to recognise that life forms, including seeds, are not an invention and the US should correct its laws to be more in alignment with the Rights of the Earth and with human rights, the US government is threatening India with trade retaliation to force us to change our patent laws yet again and introduce the unethical, unscientific and anti-human laws of patent monopolies on seed and medicine.

America’s National Association of Manufacturers — which represents about 50 US business groups — gave the suggestion to the US Trade Representatives’ office to designate India a “Priority Foreign Country”, a tag it gives to worst offenders of intellectual property rights. This is not just a US-India dispute. It is a fight against corporate enclosures of the commons. If we have to survive as a species, we need to reclaim our commons — of seed, of climate, of knowledge and resist the privatisation of every aspect of life.

We need to create the commons of the seed and cultivate seed freedom through seed saving, seed exchange and participatory breeding.

© 2014 Asian Age

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a philosopher, environmental activist and eco feminist. She is the founder/director of Navdanya Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology. She is author of numerous books including, Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis; Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply; Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace; andStaying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development. Shiva has also served as an adviser to governments in India and abroad as well as NGOs, including the International Forum on Globalization, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization and the Third World Network. She has received numerous awards, including 1993 Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) and the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize.

Source:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/04/30-9

FOOD BANKS VULNERABLE TO DROUGHT LOSSES

California drought: Food banks drying up, too

Joe Garofoli
Updated 11:08 pm, Sunday, April 20, 2014

South Hayward Parish distributes dry goods, fruits and vegetables. The food bank serves more than 100 families a day. Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle | Buy this photo

The effects of California's drought could soon hit the state's food banks, which serve 2 million of its poorest residents.

Fresh produce accounts for more than half the handouts at Bay Area food banks, but with an estimated minimum of 500,000 acres to be fallowed in California, growers will have fewer fruits and vegetables to donate.

With less local supply, food prices will spike, increasing as much as 34 percent for a head of lettuce and 18 percent for tomatoes, according to an Arizona State University study released last week. With fewer fields planted, there could be as many as 20,000 unemployed agricultural workers who will need more food handouts, especially in the Central Valley.

And if urban food banks like those in Oakland and San Francisco can't get produce from the valley, which grows a third of the nation's fruits and vegetables, their transportation costs to haul in out-of-state produce will soar.

Sue Sigler, head of the California Association of Food Banks, calls it "a perfect storm" of drought-related factors.

"It's not like we can raise our prices - everything is free," said Paul Ash, director of the San Francisco/Marin Food Bank, which distributes 149,000 meals a day across the two counties. "Not knowing (what the drought's effect will be) is a real frustration. We have to be planners, and it's hard to do that right now."

A penny difference

The Alameda County Community Food Bank expects to distribute roughly 17.8 million pounds of produce next year - about 14.5 million of that amount via the California Association of Food Banks. The Alameda County food bank pays 11 cents a pound to cover picking, packing and freight costs. Even a 1 cent per pound increase could mean $145,000 in additional costs. With an annual budget of $12 million, the organization can't take too many hits like that.

"There's absolutely a lot of nervousness here," said Allison Pratt, director of policy and services at the Alameda County food bank.

Also nervous is Mark Johnson - a Castro Valley father of two who visits three food banks a month, including one at South Hayward Parish in Hayward operated by the Alameda County food bank.

Fresh produce "would cost me $150-$175 a month if I had to buy it," said Johnson, toting two paper bags of celery and oranges.

He said he relies almost exclusively on food banks for his produce because "my income's not going up." Johnson, 58, does some freelance video production and manages an apartment building in exchange for rent.

Just ahead of him in line last week was Cathy Garcia and her 3-year-old son, Bryan. For the past six months, she has stopped by the South Hayward Parish. They've needed extra help as her husband struggles to pick up construction and landscaping work.

Garcia is 8 1/2 months pregnant and wants to keep eating healthy, so she relies on the produce from the pantry. She doesn't have the $50 a month it would cost her to buy the produce she receives from the pantry and elsewhere.

"Oh, no, it would be too much," Garcia said.

The lines keep growing. Four years ago, the program served 30 families a day during the four days a week it was open. Now it serves more than 100 families a day, said Ralph Morales, who is the director of the emergency food program at South Hayward Parish.

Central Valley impact

If the drought's impacts are as big as predicted, and there is less produce to go around, "the food we give people will last only two, two-and-a-half days," he said. "Now it is supposed to last three."

The drought's biggest impact will be in the Central Valley, where some food banks are already working to change their distribution strategy. They don't want a repeat of what happened five years ago, when the peak of the last drought coincided with the housing meltdown.

3-year-old Christopher Vargas snacks as his mother collects bread during the food bank distribution at South Hayward Parish. Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle | Buy this photo

The effects of California's drought could soon hit the state's food banks, which serve 2 million of its poorest residents.

Fresh produce accounts for more than half the handouts at Bay Area food banks, but with an estimated minimum of 500,000 acres to be fallowed in California, growers will have fewer fruits and vegetables to donate.

With less local supply, food prices will spike, increasing as much as 34 percent for a head of lettuce and 18 percent for tomatoes, according to an Arizona State University study released last week. With fewer fields planted, there could be as many as 20,000 unemployed agricultural workers who will need more food handouts, especially in the Central Valley.

And if urban food banks like those in Oakland and San Francisco can't get produce from the valley, which grows a third of the nation's fruits and vegetables, their transportation costs to haul in out-of-state produce will soar.

Sue Sigler, head of the California Association of Food Banks, calls it "a perfect storm" of drought-related factors.

"It's not like we can raise our prices - everything is free," said Paul Ash, director of the San Francisco/Marin Food Bank, which distributes 149,000 meals a day across the two counties. "Not knowing (what the drought's effect will be) is a real frustration. We have to be planners, and it's hard to do that right now."

If the drought's impacts are as big as predicted, and there is less produce to go around, "the food we give people will last only two, two-and-a-half days," he said. "Now it is supposed to last three."

The drought's biggest impact will be in the Central Valley, where some food banks are already working to change their distribution strategy. They don't want a repeat of what happened five years ago, when the peak of the last drought coincided with the housing meltdown.

Source: http://www.sfgate.com/politics/joegarofoli/article/California-drought-Food-banks-drying-up-too-5416846.php#photo-6189896

CA: GMO CULTIVATION BAN MEASURE MAKES IT TO HUMBLOT BALLOT NOV 2014

KIDS PESTICIDE EXPOSURE TAKES A BACK SEAT IN EPA REGULATION

EPA gets it wrong on kids & drift  

Paul Towers

Thursday 4-3-2014

On Cesar Chavez Day, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) delivered a slap in the face to that day’s namesake. Five years after PAN and partners challenged the agency’s lack of protections for children from drifting pesticides — and eight years after Congress passed a law requiring it — the agency yet again failed to take any substantive action.

Frustrated yet? I am. EPA is suggesting it's better to keep pesticides on the market without any new protections, even after acknowledging potentially serious impacts on children. In Monday’s response, EPA stated that “young children may have unique exposures that adults do not have.” And still, the agency has chosen to do next to nothing.

As my colleague and PAN’s policy director Kristin Schafer put it:

"The agency is completely disregarding the urgency of the risks these pesticides are posing, every day, to children's health."

Barely meeting a court-compelled deadline on Monday, EPA was responding to a lawsuit filed by farmworker, environmental and health groups — including PAN — in 2009. For five years, longer than my son has been alive, we have been pushing the agency to fulfill its mandate to protect children’s health from pesticides. What’s more, the agency should have already implemented protections three years ago.

What's the hold up?

EPA's inaction doesn’t just ignore its mission, but also the laws. In 1996, Congress passed a law requiring the agency to set standards to protect children by 2006. When no action was taken, we filed a legal petition. And when the agency failed to respond three years later, in July, we challenged the agency’s “unreasonable delay” in court.

The science highlighting necessary changes to EPA's pesticide evaluation process is very clear. And newresearch and data reinforce what we know, namely that the agency needs to:

• Include children's susceptibility in its evaluation of the impacts of pesticides;
• Protect children from drift when determining how pesticides can be used in agricultural settings;
• Create modest no-spray buffer zones around places where children live, learn and play.

Current farmworker leaders remind us why action is needed. Erik Nicholson, National Vice-President of the United Farm Workers — a plaintiff in the case — put it this way:

"EPA's refusal to act means another entire generation of children will be exposed to harmful pesticides — this is both unnecessary and unacceptable. And farmworker children currently bear and will bear the heaviest burden."

On the same day the agency touted Cesar Chavez’s legacy on it’s website, it announced it won't be taking meaningful action to better protect kids from pesticide drift. The contradiction is unnerving.

Sidestepping the issue

Digging into the details of the EPA’s non-response to the legal petition from PAN and partners, the agency fails to actually address the problems posed by pesticide drift. The summary? Business as usual. Literally. The conclusion of EPA's response acknowledges that the agency fears pushback from the pesticide industry, rather than being committed to proactively standing up for children’s health.

EPA fears pushback from the pesticide industry, rather than being committed to proactively standing up for children’s health.

EPA officials are also hiding behind a process that may or may not produce the necessary changes for some years to come. They are accepting public comments on the way they are currently calculating drift — including immediatespray drift and volatilization drift that often occurs after applications.

It’s already evident that these models are flawed, and based on some bad assumptions. So it would be good news if they were updated to provide for a more robust risk assessment process — and better protections for kids. But it will likely be a long time before new models are completed. And even longer before they're incorporated into the evaluations of new products, or re-evaluations of hazardous products that are already on the market.

No time to wait

As if the evidence wasn’t already compelling enough, two recent articles — one in The Nation and one in The Atlantic — explain the harms. As the body of evidence continues to grow, experts warn that we don’t have time to waste. The current regulatory system can’t move quickly enough to address the problems with pesticides already on the market, much less effectively evaluate the new ones.  

As Dr. Phillipe Grandjean, a Harvard School of Public Health professor profiled in several recent news stories — and author of a recent summary of the research of chemical impacts on children’s health — put it: "We don't have the luxury to sit back and wait."

And this should be a lesson to all of us. The farmworker leader and father Chavez spent much of the final years of his life discussing the harms of pesticides, especially to those most vulnerable to exposure. It’s time EPA officials took this to heart and put kids, rather than the pesticide industry, first.

Photo credit: steverts/iStock

SOURCE: http://www.panna.org/blog/epa-does-not-catch-drift

BUCHWALD NOW SUPPORTS NY GE FOOD LABELING BILL A3525B

Activists Rally in Mount Kisco for GMO Food Labeling

by Tom AuchterloniePolitics9 hours ago

People rally in Mount Kisco to support the labeling of GMO food. Photo Credit: Tom Auchterlonie

• 

MOUNT KISCO, N.Y. -- A group of activists gathered Wednesday in front of Assemblyman David Buchwald's Mount Kisco district office building to support the labeling of genetically modified organism, GMO, food.

The rally, which included chanting and signs, came less than a day after Buchwald, D-Westchester, came out in support of a state bill that will require labeling. The bill is set to be voted on by an Assembly committee.

Although Buchwald was not at the rally due to a scheduling issue, a statement of his support was handed out by Daniel Weisfield, his chief of staff and press secretary.

Announcing his support, Buchwald stated, “I am pleased to announce that following discussions with Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal, D-Manhattan, the sponsor of the bill, we have agreed on an amendment that encourages a federal labeling law. With inclusion of that amendment, I will be voting in favor of the GMO labeling bill when it comes to a vote in the Consumer Affairs and Protection Committee. I want to thank all of my constituents who shared their views with me and helped make progress on this issue.”

Buchwald voted against a labeling bill last year. However, it was because it was introduced on a Friday and scheduled for a Monday vote, explained Michael Hansen, a senior scientist with Yonkers-based Consumers Union. Hansen, who is one of the labeling supporters, also talked about how Buchwald had concerns but that they were met.

Activists were pleased with Buchwald's support.

“Very happy,” stated Stacie Orell, a campaign director for the group GMO Free NY.

“We're thrilled about it,” said John Ubaldo of Pound Ridge's John Boys Farm, who was among the folks present.

Alex Beauchamp, who is with the group Food & Water Watch and among those present at the rally, felt that with Buchwald's support there are likely enough votes to move the legislation out of committee.

Buchwald represents the 93rd district, which includes Mount Kisco, New Castle, Bedford, Pound Ridge, Lewisboro, North Salem, North Castle, Harrison and part of White Plains.

The bill's number is A03525B and its text is available on the assembly's website
.

SOURCE:  http://armonk.dailyvoice.com/politics/activists-rally-mount-kisco-gmo-food-labeling

GROUND ZERO - GE CROPS - HAWAI'I OFFERS 3X BANG FOR BUCK

Hawaii is genetically engineered crop flash point

 

By AUDREY McAVOYApril 19, 2014 9:57

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WAIALUA, Hawaii (AP) — You can trace the genetic makeup of most corn grown in the U.S., and in many other places around the world, to Hawaii.

The tiny island state 2,500 miles from the nearest continent is so critical to the nation's modern corn-growing business that the industry's leading companies all have farms here, growing new varieties genetically engineered for desirable traits like insect and drought resistance.

But these same farms have become a flash point in a spreading debate over genetic engineering in agriculture.

Kauai and Hawaii counties have moved in the past several months to regulate genetically modified organisms and the pesticides the farms use. In Maui County, a group is collecting signatures for a potential ballot measure that would impose a temporary ban on the crops.

"People are very concerned, and it's my job as a council member to determine whether those concerns are valid and take steps to protect them," said Gary Hooser, a councilman in Kauai.

Hooser and the council passed a law last year, over the mayor's veto, to require large farms to create buffer zones around their crops and to disclose what pesticides they use. The law is set to take effect in August.

View gallery

In this April 16, 2014 photo, a tassel of corn grows in a field on Pioneer Hi-Bred International lan …

Seed companies with Kauai operations — Syngenta, Pioneer, BASF and Agrigentics — have sued the county to stop the law, saying they are already regulated by state and federal laws and there is no need for additional county rules.

"We don't plant anything that isn't permitted and approved through the proper regulatory agencies, be it the EPA, the FDA and UDSA," said Mark Phillipson, the head of Hawaii corporate affairs for Syngenta, referring to the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Hawaii's origins as a critical node in corn production dates to the 1960s when James Brewbaker, a recently arrived researcher at the University of Hawaii, noticed he could plant three crops a year in Hawaii's warm climate instead of one as in most places on the mainland.

Around the same time, Pioneer Hi-Bred was trying to squeeze more research into a year by using greenhouses and farms in Florida. Brewbaker suggested researchers come to Hawaii.

Seed farms grew as research expanded and more land became available as Hawaii's sugar and pineapple plantations became less competitive in the global market and shut down.

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In this April 16, 2014 photo, the Waianae mountains serve as a backdrop to a field of corn on Pionee …

As of 2012, the most recent data available, seed crops in Hawaii were worth $217 million, up from $140 million in 2007. About 95 percent of it is corn. In all, they exceed the value of the state's next several largest crops — including sugarcane and macadamia nuts.

Developing a new seed variety takes about 10 to 12 growth cycles, said Phillipson. On the mainland, this could take 10 to 12 years. Being able to get three to four growth cycles a year in Hawaii dramatically shrinks the time it takes to bring a new product to market.

"It's getting your newest and best hybrids to market quickly," said Richard McCormack, who leads Hawaii operations for Pioneer Hi-Bred International, which is part of DuPont and has farms on Kauai and Oahu.

New genes — such as those making corn resistant to drought or floods — are inserted in a lab on the mainland.

Once federal authorities approve new varieties for planting, they're brought to Hawaii for two growth cycles or crop seasons to see how they perform in an actual field. The best ones are sent elsewhere for more growing.

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In this April 16, 2014 photo, the Waianae mountains serve as a backdrop to a field of corn on Pionee …

Syngenta, for example, sends its best to fields in Missouri, Manitoba, Canada and Mexico to make sure the corn is able to thrive in the soil, wind conditions and temperatures of these various places, Phillipson said.

Today, about 90 percent of all corn grown in the U.S. is genetically engineered and has been developed partially in Hawaii in this way.

The discontent, however, has been simmering.

There has been little scientific evidence to prove that foods grown from engineered seeds are less safe than their conventional counterparts, but consumer concerns and fears persist — not just in the islands but around the country and rest of the world.

In Hawaii, residents have also expressed concern about pesticides used in the growing of seed crops.

Hooser said he introduced the legislation to get good information that would allow the county to determine whether the seed companies' operations were having any negative effect on the health of Kauai's people and the environment.

Hawaii County, which covers the Big Island, later adopted a law banning the cultivation of genetically modified crops.

The county created an exemption, however, for papayas already grown on the Big Island that have been genetically engineered to resist a virus that nearly wiped out the fruit in years past. No seed companies currently have farms on the island, so they're not affected by the law.

In Maui County, a group called Sustainable Hawaiian Agriculture for the Keiki and the Aina Movement is gathering signatures for a ballot measure to impose the ban until seed companies complete environmental and public health studies find their practices to be safe.

Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences, a unit of Dow Chemical, both have farms in Maui County.

State Sen. Clarence Nishihara predicted the wrangling over genetically modified crops will continue, in Hawaii and around the country.

"There's no one side that's going to say, 'OK, we had enough. We've given up on the issue,' right?" said Nishihara, who chairs the state Senate's agriculture committee. "They'll keep fighting it. Isn't that the American way?"

Source:  http://finance.yahoo.com/news/hawaii-genetically-engineered-crop-flash-point-135158617.html