The citizens of Maui county were able to pass the GMO Initiative despite $7.9 million dollars spent to defeat it by Monsanto and Dow.  Monsanto and Dow immediately announced they will be filing a lawsuit to prevent the GMO initiative from going into effect.

There was much misinformation promulgated by Dow and Monsanto.

1. “Law is poorly written”.  Actually you can read it for yourself and it is clearly written.

2. “Expensive”.  Dow and Monsanto will be paying for the studies NOT the County. And only  if they want to prove their operations safe and continue them.

3. “Ban on farming”.  GMO operations comprise only 1-2% of Maui farming and other than a GMO coffee plantation and a Kula corn farmer, all GMOs are planted by Dow and Monsanto.

4. “Papaya police”.   Maui county passed a GMO Taro ban in 2009 and there has been no “taro police”.

5. “Harms farmers”.  GMO crops in the ground can live out their lifecycle.  The few food farmers using them can then plant conventional seeds.

6. “Backyard farmers fined”.  You cannot buy GMO seeds at the store.  Except for GMO papaya, all GMO seeds require a signed contract before a farmer can buy them.  Some of our papaya are already contaminated with GMO DNA.  If you unknowingly plant one of these, you will not have violated the law because the transgression has to be “knowing and intentional”.

Tamara Paltin gives a good clarification as Mayor Arakawa repeats misunderstandings of the initiative: