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CLERK
Murashige, Laura cr€,
From: Christopher Lichty [christopher @pacificorchidfarms.com] 2013 SEP ! 0 An II; 15
Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2013 12:42 PM
To: counciltestimony @co.hawaii.hi.us
Subject: GMO
To Ms Brenda Ford:
I heard on the radio last night that you feel papaya farmers can grow without genetically modified papaya. You
stated that you and your husband grow a quarter acre of papaya just fine, and that if there were papaya ring
spot virus around your plants would be "dead dead dead" and you used this as an example of what other
farmers could do. This demonstrates your lack of understanding on how pests and disease are transmitted. The
fact that you can grow non GMO papaya is directly because most papaya farmers are using the papaya
developed by our university that confers resistance to the virus. You don't have the virus because there is very
little of it present to be transmitted. If you eliminate GMO papaya and only have papaya that is susceptible to
the virus you will soon have a virus population explode and EVERY papaya will become infected. It is like
vaccines. We don't have polio because most people have been inoculated. This allows people to not get vaccines
and they do just fine, because those that did get inoculated keep the disease population to a minimum.
Please, don't enact laws that affect us farmers when you don't fully understand them.
Christopher Lichty
Pacific Orchid Farms
808- 965-2390
www.pacificorchidfarms.com
Comm. No. 3 g c, 197
Ref. To: P/P` AerC
Ref. Dote SEP 2 3 2fl13