Saturday, July 25, 2015

Press Release From The Hawaii Action



 We are moving.  Below is our first Press Release.  We are currently recruiting substantial support from the Native Hawaiian community and small Hawaii farmers.  But that's just the beginning.  We are also laying the groundwork for similar actions in universities across America, and still further afield.  If you want to join our action or start one of your own, contact us.  If you don't have any university connections, but have ideas for different types of action, let us know about them.  We are open to any suggestion.  We will give help and advice wherever we can.
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 PRESS RELEASE from CONCERNED FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I.
Yet another matter of critical concern for the University of Hawai‘i is just emerging.  Two weeks ago, an Open Letter of Protest signed by more than sixty faculty members from the University of Hawai‘i was sent to Robert Bley-Vroman (Chancellor, Mānoa), Reed Dasenbrock (Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs) and Maria Gallo (Dean, College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR)).  The Letter concerns two interrelated issues. 
The first issue concerns restrictions placed on the academic freedom of Professor Hector Valenzuela, an Extension Specialist in CTAHR.  These included his freedom to raise legitimate questions concerning certain aspects of biotechnology, to hold meetings at which such aspects would be discussed, to provide notice to students and faculty of similar meetings organized by others, and to perform other actions that would normally form part of his professional obligations as an extension specialist. 
The second issue, which we believe to be the underlying cause of the first issue, concerns practices followed by CTAHR for the last two decades, which have led to specific violations of CTAHR’s own mission statement (detailed in the Letter appended here).  CTAHR has prioritized the interests of large out-of-state corporations over those of small local farmers despite its obligation under the Land Grant College Act to support the food producers of the area it serves.  While small local farmers mostly produce food for consumption in Hawai‘i, the corporations that CTAHR vigorously supports merely exploit Hawai‘i’s tropical climate for the experimental testing of pesticides and pesticide-resistant crops, thereby creating health hazards for those living in areas where the pesticides are sprayed. 
The first and second issues are so closely interlinked that they cannot be separated.  Attempts to silence those like Professor Valenzuela who question such practices are a consequence of corporate influence on university policies, a systemic problem affecting universities nationwide.
We requested a preliminary response to our Letter within ten working days, but have received nothing from either the Chancellor or the VCAA.  We did receive a response from the Dean, but found it unacceptable, since it avoided any specific engagement with the issues we had outlined, treating those issues as of a kind that could be dealt with only internally by CTAHR, without any involvement of the rest of the University or the general public. 
We strongly disagree; both issues should concern every resident of Hawai‘i.  The purpose of academic freedom is to ensure that the community has access to a wide variety of views and opinions, rather than only those of a particular interest group.  A university standing on “ceded lands” owes to the Hawaiian people from whom those lands were stolen the vital duty of protecting their future livelihood.  A university founded under the Land Grant College Act owes to the community that supports it the vital duty of ensuring a reliable flow of pesticide-free food.   Yet since the overthrow of the Monarchy the percentage of food produced in Hawai‘i that is eaten in Hawai‘i has declined by nearly 90%--a situation that in times of growing world-wide political instability and climate change puts the entire population of these islands at risk from any event that might interrupt imports of food.
The failure of leading UH administrators to admit the significance of the issues raised in our Open Letter, or even acknowledge their existence, leaves us with no option but to place them directly before the general public.  We are therefore initiating a public campaign to discuss these issues.  We hope this will contribute to transformations within the University that will help those of us who work in it to better work alongside and serve all who live in Hawai‘i.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

First In A Series Of Targeted Actions

UHM faculty condemn academic freedom violations

The university's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources has restricted and violated one of it's own professor's academic freedom, and a group of his professional colleagues are speaking out against his mistreatment.
in UH System Woes in Pesticide concerns
Sixty faculty members at the University of Hawaii at Manoa have signed a letter sent to Manoa Chancellor Robert Bley-Vroman, the vice-chancellor for academic affairs, and Maria Gallo, Dean of the university’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR) asking that the university acknowledge the restrictions and violations of academic freedom imposed on CTAHR Professor Hector Valenzuela.
For years now, the college has been accepting money from agrochemical companies such as Monsanto while simultaneously advocating for a style of agriculture that is dependent on the products created by these companies, namely Genetically Modified Organisms that can withstand the use of the companies’ lucrative pesticides. Dr. Valenzuela’s field of expertise involves discovering ways in which crops can thrive in our climate without the use of the GMO-pesticide model of agriculture. The 20+ year CTAHR veteran spent six years in the early ‘90s developing the first long-term organic farming research project in Hawaii and the Pacific region. But around 1998, when Monsanto money began entering the equation, his research plot was shut down by the college. Over the next 15 years, Valenzuela tolerated what he calls a climate of “bigotry, retaliation and hostility” in retaliation for his failure to tow the dominant CTAHR line (documented in Paul Koberstein’s article “The Silencing of Hector Valenzuela,” published here). The university denies his accusations.
Maria Gallo was the only one of the three addressees who has responded to the faculty letter so far (originally sent July 6). However, her response did not satisfy the undersigned professors that their two primary concerns (the violations of academic freedom and of freedom of speech, and deviations from CTAHR’s publicly stated mission, both of which came to light as a result of the Koberstein article) would be addressed. They elected to publicize their letter as a result and The Independent has obtained a copy for publishing:
To: Robert W. Bley-Vroman, Chancellor, UH Manoa
Reed W. Dasenbrock, Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs
Maria Gallo, Dean of CTAHR
       
From:  Concerned Faculty Members of the University of Hawai‘i.
 
We, the undersigned faculty members of the University of Hawai‘i, request that the University publicly recognize the restrictions of academic rights and freedoms that have been imposed over the last two decades on Professor Hector Valenzuela of the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR), see that all those restrictions are fully rescinded, and ensure that future policies of CTAHR do not deviate from CTAHR’s stated mission in ways of which the aforesaid restrictions are merely symptomatic.

Professor Valenzuela came to CTAHR in 1991, and is currently a Vegetable Crops Extension Specialist, S5.  The first restriction on his activities was the 1999 closure, for no valid reason, of a series of research projects in organic farming that Professor Valenzuela was carrying out at the University’s Waimānalo Experiment Station.  Subsequently there followed a series of harassments that included bans on workshops and other events he had planned on neighbor islands, an activity involving outreach to the community that formed part of his duties as an extension specialist, as well as discrimination against him with regard to the use of university transport and phone services.  In addition he received abusive e-mails and was verbally abused by both colleagues and administrators.

The ostensible justification for such measures was that Professor Valenzuela was “criticizing CTAHR faculty and programs with intellectually dishonest arguments and actively supporting the poisonous activities of groups basically opposed to CTAHR, science and progress,” in the words of one CTAHR administrator.  In fact, all that Professor Valenzuela was doing was providing farmers and other interested parties with information about organic farming methods and expressing his doubts about some of the methods employed in biotechnology.  Far from his position being “opposed to science”, we can cite hundreds of scientific articles that are equally critical of various aspects of biotechnology.  In other words, controversies involving biotechnology are not the single, simple conflict between pro-science/pro-biotechnology and anti-science/anti-biotechnology that CTAHR administrators have claimed, but a series of legitimate scientific arguments.  Yet he was explicitly informed by his Head of Department that he could not discuss such issues in the course of his professional duties.  To limit his right to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry in this way is a violation of the principles on which all universities are based, as well of the right to free discussion on which all non-totalitarian societies are based.

We are aware that some of the restrictions on Professor Valenzuela have since been rescinded, but the harassment and the denial of academic freedom continue.  He has been told repeatedly by his Dean not to notify students at Mānoa and other UH campuses about meetings where biotechnology and/or pesticide use will be subjected to critical scrutiny.  Insulting and abusive e-mails addressed to him have been distributed to other colleagues in breach of State privacy laws, a misdemeanor in Hawai‘i. We therefore call on the University to (a) condemn such activities on the part of CTAHR officials or any other University employees, (b) ensure that Professor Valenzuela’s right to free expression of his opinions in the performance of his duties as an extension specialist remains unabridged, so long as the content of his speech bears directly on topics involved in his subject area (the normal criterion in issues of academic freedom), and (c) that the plots on which he was carrying out his research projects be allotted him for the duration of his tenure in CTAHR.

That said, it must be pointed out that the treatment accorded to Professor Valenzuela, serious though it is in itself, is merely a symptom of broader and deeper problems with the current policies and procedures of CTAHR.  What these problems are may be best illustrated by comparing three sentences from CTAHR’s own statement of its “Philosophy on Agricultural Technologies” with the pattern of CTAHR development over the last two decades.

1)  “Hawai‘i has a centuries-old tradition of food production, and CTAHR is continuing this agricultural tradition into the 21st century.”

That agricultural tradition is indeed centuries old.  But it was a tradition not of producing foods primarily for export to other areas, still less one of producing substances for non-food purposes, but a tradition of providing sufficient and nutritious food for the people of Hawai‘i.  When Captain Cook arrived in these islands, Hawai‘i was entirely self-sufficient, producing a plentiful supply of food for a population almost as large as today’s.  Today, the quantity of food grown in Hawai‘i and consumed here has fallen from 100% to little more than 10%.  A problem of which everyone is aware but which those in government, industry and academia rarely if ever refer to is that if some disaster, whether due to natural or human causes, were to interrupt the flow of imported food for as little as one week, the people of Hawai‘i would find themselves on the brink of starvation.  In an era of rapid climate change and growing political instability, to be so dependent on outside sources is potentially suicidal.  Yet instead of supporting local production to help raise the percentage of homegrown food, CTAHR has increasingly devoted its resources to serving the interests of biotechnology and non-food commodities.  At times, as many as 60 or 70 CTAHR faculty and staff have worked on biotechnology projects, despite the fact that, after the initial success of the Rainbow papaya, not one of CTAHR’s more than a dozen attempts to produce a commercially-viable genetically engineered plant species has proved successful.

2) “The role of CTAHR as a land-grant institution is to assist all members and sectors of Hawai‘i’s food and agricultural system to reach their full potential in an environmentally and socially compatible way.”

Increasingly, large areas of agricultural land, representing over 70% of the area devoted to the production of diversified and edible crops in Hawai’i, have been acquired through lease or purchase by five large seed-and-pesticide corporations (Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow Chemical, BASF and DuPont-Pioneer) that have come to Hawai‘i over the last five decades.  Their purpose was not to improve or increase Hawai‘i’s food production but rather to exploit Hawai‘i’s ideal soil and climate conditions in order to grow and test genetically-engineered and pesticide-resistant seeds for export to other areas worldwide.  It is surely questionable whether, in terms of a land-grant institution’s mission, such corporations should even be treated as members of “Hawai‘i’s food and agricultural system” at all.  Yet CTAHR does not merely regard them as an indispensable part of “diversified agriculture”, it gives the appearance of favoring them over other branches, and has provided its full support, in articles, workshops, and outreach programs, to the various activities of these corporations.  Time and energy used in such ways have inevitably detracted from time and energy that could have been spent in support of Hawai‘i’s food producers.

3) “We uphold the values of academic freedom and respect the rights of farmers and consumers to decide which technologies are most appropriate.”

Clearly, in the case of Professor Valenzuela, the values of academic freedom were not upheld.  The views he expressed involved, as stated above, issues on which scientific disagreement is perfectly legitimate.  While it would be foolish to condemn, as some do, every aspect of biotechnology, some of its practices have a clear potential for harm, in particular the growing of herbicide-resistant crops, thereby creating herbicide-resistant weeds that require more, and more frequent, spraying with stronger and stronger herbicides, some of which are known carcinogens and/or endocrine disruptors.  Practices such as these may be far from “environmentally and socially compatible”, and in deciding “which technologies are most appropriate”, both “farmers and consumers” have a right to be warned of potential risks they may run in applying pesticides, in consuming food from crops that have been sprayed with known toxic substances, and in damaging the health of the environment on which any sustainable agriculture depends.

In short, CTAHR has failed in at least these three respects to adhere to its own publicly stated policies.  Professor Valenzuela’s particular concerns result from these larger, and highly consequential failures, and, perhaps because the mistreatment he has experienced is symptomatic of these institutional problems, they have not yet been satisfactorily addressed through the available channels. We therefore request that the University, in addition to addressing those concerns, review the current implementation of CTAHR policies with a view to determining the extent to which such policies may deviate from CTAHR’s stated mission, and take whatever measures may be necessary to bring CTAHR into full compliance with the terms of that mission.  As these are matters of some urgency, once the three of you have had a chance to confer, we would appreciate receipt of an outline from one or all three of you of how you intend to respond to these concerns. We ask that you respond within ten working days of your receipt of this letter (July 20).

Sincerely,

Ibrahim Aoude, Professor of Ethnic Studies
Cristina Bacchilega, Graduate Chair and Professor of English
Derek Bickerton, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics
Dharm Bhawuk, Professor, Shidler College of Business
Eileen Cain, Leeward CC Language Arts
Jim Caron, Professor of English
Kimo Alexander Cashman, Associate Specialist, College of Education
Arindam Chakrabarti, Professor of Philosophy
Gaye Chan, Professor and Chair of Art
Kahelelani Clark, Assistant Professor of Hawaiian Studies (KCC)
Haruko Cook, Professor of East Asian Languages and Linguistics
Vrinda Dalmiya, Professor of Philosophy
Marcus Daniel, Associate Professor of History
Monisha Das Gupta. Associate Professor of Ethnic and Women’s Studies and Director of the Center for South Asian Studies
Emmanuel Drechsel, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies
Kahea Faria, Assistant Specialist, College of Education
Kathy Ferguson, Professor of Political Science and Women’s Studies
Cynthia Franklin, Professor of English
Candace Fujikane, Associate Professor of English
Vernadette Gonzalez, Associate Professor of American Studies and Honors Director
Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, Associate Professor of Political Science
Michael Hadfield, Professor Emeritus of Biology; Researcher, Pacific Biosciences Research Center
Ku‘ualoha Ho‘omanawanui, Associate Professor of English
Ruth Y. Hsu, Associate Professor of English
George Kent, Professor Emeritus of Political Science
Noel Kent, Professor of Ethnic Studies
Jesse Knutson, Assistant Professor of Indo-Pacific Languages and Literature
Eiko Kosasa, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Leeward CC
Karen Kosasa, Associate Professor of American Studies
Sankaran Krishna, Professor and Graduate Chair of Political Science
Charles R. Lawrence III, Centennial University Professor of Law
Laura Lyons, Professor and Chair of English
Paul Lyons, Professor of English
Margaret Maaka, Professor, College of Education
Kieko Matteson, Associate Professor of History
Susan Curtin Miller, Project Director/PI UH-Manoa Aquaponics Workforce and Greenhouse Cooperative Initiative, College of Education
Kalawaia Moore, Assistant Professor and Coordinator Hawaiian Studies (WCC)
William O’Grady, Professor of Linguistics
Jonathan Osorio, Professor of Hawaiian Studies
Gary Pak, Professor of English
Craig Santos Perez, Associate Professor of English
Ann Peters, Professor of Linguistics
Joan Peters, Professor of English
Sarita Rai, Study Abroad Director
Rich Rath, Associate Professor of History
John Rieder, Professor of English
Joe Ritter, Laboratory Director, UH IfA Maui ATRC
Tara Rojas, Associate Professor of Spanish, Language Arts
S. Shankar, Professor of English
Nandita Sharma, Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the International Cultural Studies Program
David Stannard, Professor and Chair of American Studies
William Steiner, retired Dean of UH Hilo College of Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resource Management
Ruslan Suvorov, Language Technology Specialist, Center for Language & Technology
Ty Kawika Tengan, Associate Professor and Chair of Ethnic Studies
Les Watling, Professor of Biology
Valerie Wayne, Professor Emeritus of English
Laiana Wong, Associate Professor & Graduate Chair, Kawaihuelani Center for Hawaiian Language
Mari Yoshihara, Professor and Graduate Chair of American Studies
Ming-bao Yue, Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures
John Zuern, Associate Professor of English

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

The Time For Action Is Here



You may have quite naturally concluded from the absence of posts over the last several weeks that the old Smoking Gun had fired its last round, that it smoked no more, that it was defunct, deceased, that it had passed on and joined the choir invisible of dead and abandoned blogs.  If so, how wrong you were.

The Gun has been silent because it has been undergoing a metamorphosis.  It’s no longer concerned with telling the truth about the Dirty Half-Dozen and the evils of herbicide-resistant crops.  It’s going into action mode.

One of the co-founders of Occupy Wall Street  was also one of the first to realize that “Protest is broken.”  Traditional methods of protest no longer work, and the ballot box is useless because a majority of politicians on both sides have sold out to the super-rich.  Revolution is impossible because although our population is more heavily armed than any other, and although our country owes its very existence to a revolution, the will for it simply does not exist anymore.  What’s left?  Shall we all go home, switch on the TV, and see what the Kardashians are up to today?

Never!  We simply have to use our intelligence and ingenuity to figure out new ways of action—a whole series of limited, targeted, specific actions that will continually switch targets to confuse and baffle the forces of the establishment.  The first of these is already under way and this blog will be reporting on this and other similar actions as they develop.  It will also serve as an arena for suggesting future actions and discussing their likely effectiveness, as well as for gathering information required for the implementation of such actions.

This change in focus requires a change in policy with regard to comments.  Hitherto I have allowed all comments pro or contra, in other words the traditional “debate” formula for a comments section.  Now I shall give precedence to comments that materially advance the action program.  Negative comments on the program will not be published.  Much as I support freedom of speech, pro-GMOers have plenty of outlets for their views already—they don’t need more.

The primary focus of the blog remains unchanged—the combatting of herbicide-resistant crops—for the present, at least.  But Pope Francis’s latest encyclical, Laudato Si has shown us that all the evils afflicting our world today form part of a complex interconnected web.  Wherever we see a weakness in that web, we should attack it.

Stay tuned.  Become part of the action.  It’s already happening.  The time for sitting on our butts yacking about the horrors of pesticides is over.  Daily updates from now on.  There will be tangible things you can do to help in the struggle.

Friday, June 5, 2015

Bill Nye and the Science Lie




In an interview with HuffPost last month, the Science Guy revealed how Monsanto changed his mind about GMOs.  In so doing, he showed within a few minutes of conversation the shallowness in his scientific understanding of the issues involved.

LIE #1
“We are able to feed 7.2 billion people, which a century and a half ago you could barely feed 1 and a half billion people and [it's] largely because of the success of modern farming."

There are so many things wrong with this.  In the first place, what’s Bill’s data base for assuming that a century and a half ago, the world could hardly feed itself?  Zero, to the best of my knowledge.  To the contrary, folk over most of the world fed themselves as well as or probably better than now until European colonialism screwed up their economies.

In the second place, who exactly is meant by the "we" and the "you" hereAm I alone in seeing  gross arrogance in this remark?  Not "The world is able to feed itself" or "The  world as a whole is able to feed 7.2 billion", but “WE” are able to feed the world, the way “we” want to feed it.  Naturally, the last thing we want is for the world to feed itself, because people in the rest of the world are so stupid and ignorant they wouldn’t have a clue how to feed themselves unless we "advanced nations" kindly either showed them how or did it for them.  Bill probably doesn’t realize that’s what he’s saying.  But it is.

In the third place, pretty well everyone who’s seriously studied the world economy is agreed that shortage of food is not and seldom if ever has been the problem.  Shortage of money, shortage of infrastructure, exploitative governments, these are the kinds of factor that make for shortage of food.  Not to mention the use of vast areas of land for cattle, the use of vast quantities of food fed to cattle, the use of agricultural products to produce ethanol, and on and on.  If you don’t do something about these kinds of thing, you can improve agriculture as much as you want and you will still get hunger and wider malnutrition in a large part of the world.  It’s inexcusable for a supposedly primo science communicator not to know all of this.

LIE #2
“GMO crops put the herbicides and pesticide inside the plant, rather than spraying it on them and having it run down into streams.” 

Come on, Bill!  This is a real “Duh!” moment.  How COULD you get a functional herbicide inside a plant?  How would it work, would the plant go out and fight other plants?  Surely even Monsanto didn’t try to pass off this whopper?  Of course, what really happens is probably the worst aspect of genetic engineering.   The whole point of making Roundup-resistant plants is so that you CAN “spray it on them”, just as much as it takes—the weeds wilt and wither, but your crop still stands tall.  Because the herbicide not only still “runs down into streams”--with the aid of the adjuvants (themselves untested, btw) that are added  to all pesticides, it spreads all over and is thoroughly absorbed by every part of the plant,  so eventually by you and your nearest and dearest.

And what effect might this have?  Don’t go there, Bill, it’s more than your career’s worth.  If any serious science communicator starts to even look at the accumulating scientific evidence that chemicals in general and herbicides in particular may be responsible for the otherwise inexplicable rise in chronic degenerative diseases that has pushed America down to forty-somethingth place in world longevity rankings, those nice people at Monsanto who were so generous with their time and trouble will demonize that communicator, will hound and harass him (or her) and try to discredit her (or him) in any way they can.

Your choice, Science Guys in general.  You can save your jobs while you go on betraying the public you are supposed, like the police, to serve and protect.  Or you can do the right thing, which is to alert that same public to the risks that are being imposed on them in the name of corporate greed.  Of course, if enough of you did this, there would be too many of you to demonize. 
 
It’s the old problem of the mice belling the cat.   Who’s on first?  Who will dare?

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Pro-GMO Firms Shoot Themselves In The Foot by Fighting Labeling Laws



Ever heard that old expression, “hoist with his own petard” and wondered what it means?  Turns out it comes from the old days of siege warfare, when some unlucky guy was ordered to pick up the mediaeval equivalent of an IED (the “petard”) and plant it beneath the iron-studded oaken gate of a fortified city.  Explosives being pretty new in those days, it often happened that the thing would go off before the guy could get rid of it.  Hence the expression.

Whodathunk it?   That’s exactly the kind of result Monsanto & Co. got by wasting millions of dollars trying to block GMO labeling initiatives (and in most cases succeeding).  In two states alone (Washington and California) they spent, according to one source, more than $55,000,000, of which Monsanto’s share fell just short of a whopping $12,000,000.

They should have saved their money.

We first got wind of what was happening several weeks ago.  Costco seldom if ever used to carry organic produce.  Suddenly, overnight it seemed, the megastore blossomed with organic signs and labels in almost every food department.  Safeway and other mainstream supermarkets followed suit.  What was happening?
Well, frustrated at the ballot box, consumers were voting with their wallets.

It wasn’t long before even the MSM caught on to the trend.  On April 15th, Mark Bittman wrote a column on it for the N.Y. Times.  “A growing demand for organics, and the near-total reliance by U.S. farmers on genetically modified corn and soybeans, is driving a surge in imports from other nations where crops largely are free of bioengineering”, he opened, and went on to recite a litany of woe for the GMOers.  Since most corn and soybeans become chicken or cattle feed, GMO varieties can’t be used if the meat is to be labeled organic.  But customers had decided that if they couldn’t get labels for GMO food, the only way they could avoid GMO-fed meat was by buying organic.  As a consequence, countries where few if any GMO crops were grown reaped a bonanza—soybean imports from India doubled in a year, while Romanian corn increased almost twentyfold.  And guess what?—prices for organic meat are starting to fall already.

The meat story is only part of a much larger trend that’s featured in a special report, “The War on Big Food” by Beth Kowitt in the June issue of Fortune magazine.  “Major packaged-food companies lost $4 billion in market share alone last year, as shoppers swerved to fresh and organic alternatives,” says Kowitt.  “This is the most dynamic, disruptive, and transformational time that I’ve seen in my career” says one food executive with 37 years’ experience.  One new organic-food company has grown to an astonishing $1.2 billion in sales in a space of only two years. 

Of course the trend didn’t begin with the labeling referendums. Organic-food sales have been growing steadily over the last decade.   Most processed foods contain other things besides GMOs—artificial preservatives that, ironically, were put there to stop food going bad and sickening people.  But, as our experience in Costco showed us, the trend only reached the tipping point—the point at which retail companies started to jump the sinking GMO ship—after labeling initiatives in Washington, California, Oregon and Colorado had failed.  That caused even companies as big and seemingly impregnable as Hershey’s to look at the sales figures and decide it was time to switch teams.  In 2014 Hershey’s had kicked in $258,000 to defeat the Washington initiative and $493,900 to defeat the California initiative.  But even if you do beat them, you may still have to join them.  In February of this year Hershey’s announced the start of a campaign to clean up their act.  In future, they would remove all “unnatural” substances from their products, including milk from GMO-fed cows and artificial sweeteners made with GMO corn.

It’s interesting to see exactly how the “hoist-with-own-petard” machinery worked.  Prior to the initiatives, most people had little if any idea of what GMOs were.  If instead of jumping immediately into battle mode the Big Six had just waited on the sidelines, things would probably have stayed that way.  If the vote had gone against them, as well it might, they could have fought a series of delaying actions in court—just as they are now doing with the successful initiatives in Hawaii counties—and meanwhile spent some of the money they’d saved on pro-GMO propaganda.  Thus, even if they didn’t win back what they lost at the polls, their control over the media and their relentless “Science, science, science” b.s. could have taken any steam out of the rush to buy non-GMO-labeled foods.

But no.  They made a big production out of it.  GMO foods were suddenly on every TV and radio station and in every newspaper and magazine.  They came front and center to public awareness as never before.  And while John and Jane Q. Public might buy the arguments about labeling adding to food costs, they were still far from sure about GMO safety.  Why would GMO firms spend all that money if they weren’t hiding something?  So, once you knew you weren’t going to be able to buy stuff with non-GMO labels, the logical thing to do was to buy food that had an already-existing label that could by law be placed only on non-GMO foods.

The Law of Unintended Consequences has struck again.  GMOers seem especially prone to it.  Look at the “superweeds”, herbicide-resistant species that Monsanto swore could never be produced by its precious Roundup.  Look at all the GMO wonder products announced with great fanfare that have quickly fizzled.

The market has its own inexorable logic.  Sellers will sell whatever sells.  If it stops selling, they’ll switch to something else.  It would be ironic indeed if GMOs were finally defeated, not by new scientific revelations, not by government legislation, but by the inscrutable workings of the Invisible Hand.  And those same market forces are not yet done with GMO foods.  Any trend, once it passes the tipping point, automatically picks up strength as a rolling snowball picks up snow.  Increased demand causes increased production.  Increased production brings a fall in prices.  A fall in prices results in more and more customers.  So even one of the GMOer’s favorite stories--the one about organic food being just a rich yuppie fad—no longer works for them, as Mr. & Mrs. Average find growing quantities of competitively priced organic food on their local supermarket shelves.

GMO firms must be kicking themselves.  With their shot foot, in their petard wound.