Saturday, January 17, 2004

 

The fight begins on the local level 

I don't know how much national play this story gets, but before it's over you'll probably hear more about this. Altered-plant debate heats up

Mendocino County, directly north of our present location, is perhaps the most liberal in the country, as this article will suggest. The county is crawling with organic farms, including some wineries. They're worried, and rightly so, that geneticly engineered crops will contaminate the purity of their organic status. in an effort to protect their hard work (it takes three years to regain the organic status once it's lost), the good citizens of Mendocino have introduced Measure H in an attempt to ban their use in the county.

Needless to say....the call to arms has gone out throughout the chemical producing community.


"At issue is who will set the rules for a fast-emerging biotech industry promoting genetically modified organisms and whether local or state agencies can adopt stricter regulations than current federal guidelines. So far, the state has few regulations in place to govern the growing use of genetically altered crops.


Monsanto, Bayer CropScience and Dow AgroSciences are leading members of the California Plant Health Association, the influential farm chemical trade group that rushed to form the anti-Measure H campaign committee last month. It's called "Citizens Against Measure H -- A Coalition of Farmers, Taxpayers and the California Plant Health Association."


~* There you go. Monsanto, Dow, et al are leading members of the California Plant Health Association. They've formed "Citizens Against Measure H". I suppose we're ALL citizens. Let's see what their argument is...


"Association President Beckley this week warned that Measure H could set a disturbing regulatory precedent. "It's just bad policy for a county to regulate crops in this manner," Beckley said.


~* But it's GOOD policy to let industry regulate itself? The chemical line-up I mentioned above will flood the area with money to fight this all the way. We have to stop them here, if be the will of the people.... before the whole friggin' country is infected by them. They don't even permit farmers who comply with the program to use the seeds from the fruit they grew. It's patented! They have to buy another batch NEXT year! No WONDER the companies like them. But how do they get farmers to go along with that?


Monsanto doesn't even want the presence of genetically altered materiel to be mentioned anywhere on the packaging of these foods..... and have resisted all attempts at making it mandatory. But that's not all...!

They even object to companies advertising the ABSENCE of genetically modified materiel in foods!!!..... as if that's not a selling point for anybody. If it's so friggin' wonderful, why do they keep trying to hide it?

~Brahma*

posted by ~Brahma 1:23 AM