HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOM 0225.057 2008-2010
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Murashige, Laura Lo V10. 2Z5
From: jamie gilmore Damie_gilmore@yahoo.com] r
Sent: Wednesday, April 01, 2009 8:23 PM
To: counciltestimony@co.hawaii.hi.us
Subject: Resolution Opposing HB1226 2009 RPR 2 Ail 10 211
1. t-11 I
Hawaii County Council C NT
Aloha mai kakou „
As a consumer and supporter of healthy food and agricultural practices in Hawaii, I
strongly urge you to oppose H.B. 1226 and any law prohibiting or preventing the state or
county from regulating GMOs in Hawaii. Community and consumer safety is endangered when
local governments are prohibited from taking every step to ensure public safety. Recent
food safety disasters (i.e., peanut butter and spinach recalls) affirm the need to
establish the broadest safety net possible. Consumers deserve and demand comprehensive
food safety standards, which must include state and county governments.
Hawaii needs local community oversight of GM05 to:
Protect our health
GMOs are not the same as natural plants. GMOs are created by artificially forcing genes
from one organism into another, using virus, bacteria & antibiotics. This process creates
unknown mutations that have never before been in the food supply or ecosystem. Scientific
studies on laboratory animals show that GMOs can cause toxic, allergic, and deadly
reactions. GMOs have NOT been scientifically tested on humans to prove that they are safe
for consumption. Heavily invested biotech corporations are gambling away the health of our
community for their own profit.
Protect our environment
Claims that GMOs will potentially benefit Hawaii must be weighed against the potential
damage to our unique island environments and local agriculture. Chemical and biological
contamination from industrial GMO-agriculture could have irreversible, devastating effects
on Hawai'i. Unnatural gene mutations introduced through CMOs may harm native insects,
birds, fish, and soil health--with unknown longterm impacts on the unique ecosystems of
Hawaii. It is of great community concern that experimental GMO crops and the toxic
chemicals used to grow them now exist around Hawaii's local schools, watersheds, coral
reefs. Hawaii has had more open-field experimental GMO crops than anywhere else in the
world, without any formal independent monitoring.
Protect our local farmers, laborers and economy Worldwide, consumers increasingly reject
GMO-foods. Cross-contamination by GMOs of natural crops and unapproved releases of GMO-
products from labs have raised serious consumer concerns and economic losses to farmers.
Like any living organism, GMOs could be impossible to recall or control when planted in
the open or distributed unknowingly. GMOs are also patented and owned by large multi-
national corporations. In Hawaii there are no legal protections for our small local
farmers against the types of corporate lawsuits filed against local farmers whose natural
crops are accidentally cross-polinated with the patented GMOs. In addition, allowing local
regulation of the biotech industry to be preempted by federal actions may forfeit our
right to collect state and county taxes, permit fees or other revenue, as is required of
every other industry in the islands.
Protect consumer and community rights
It is alarming that biotech corporations refuse to label their products or give public
notice of their activities. Consumers have been denied our right to know and choose what
is in the food we eat, and what experimental crops are grown in our communities. Already
GMOs have been brought into our local communities without any labeling, without our
informed consent, without any legal protections for the people who eat them and the
environment in which they grow. Local government accountability and informed public
consent is fundamental to developing a safe, sustainable and transparent scientific
economy in Hawaii. Biotech businesses and researchers in Hawaii should encourage informed
community review and feedback, not avoid oversight from the very communities most effected
by their activities. Comm. N 2.7";. S1
Ref. To, No. s91_()
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Ref. Dote
The people of Hawaii want, need and deserve more safe, healthy food--and should expect
that their State and local government will be at work to protect them. I urge you to
oppose attempts to weaken or limit State or County authority to regulate genetically
modified food in Hawaii.
Aloha Aina,
jamie gilmore
po box 986
naalehu, HI 96772
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