Don't be bullied by Biotech's threats!!! Support informed policy making!!! Support a reporting requirement as part of LD1650!!!
ProtectMaine Farmers
UPDATE: The billl is on the way to the Governor's office! Great Work! No need take action!
TAKE ACTION: Please Call Today and Leave a Message for Your State Senator 207-287-1540 or contact them at home this weekend
Urge Support for the Amended Version of LD1650 that Includes a Reporting Required! (Who's my State Senator?)
VOTE LIKELY MONDAY! Please take a moment and leave a message for your Senator. Leave your name and address in the message, urge them to support LD 1650. Be sure to ask for a response and let them know if you're a farmer or gardener. LD 1650 is an important step forward in protecting Maine farmers from contamination by genetically modified crops.
Don't be bullied by Biotech's threats!!! Support informed policy making!!! Support a reporting requirement as part of LD1650!!!
After a year of negotiations, compromises and hard work, the Agriculture Committee has finally voted An Act to Amend the Laws Concerning Genetically Engineered Plant and Seeds out of Committee. The version of the bill with an amendment requiring reporting just passed the House. It will probably be voted on early next week in the Senate, so take action now and tell your State Senator to support the amended LD1650. TAKE ACTION
The final bill does some important things to protect Maine farmers, but still doesn't go far enough to provide our policymakers with all the information they need to make good decisions that effect the future of agriculture in Maine. An amendment will be offered on the House floor that will add a measure to the bill that would require manufacturers of genetically engineered seed to submit an annual report to the Maine Department of Agriculture giving the total number of potential acres that could be planted in each type of genetically engineered crop. This would allow the Department of Agriculture to track the use of genetically engineered crops, see trends in their use, and be alerted to new crops coming into the state.
This seems like a simple thing: one number, once a year, to allow policymakers to make better informed decisions. Why wouldn't policymakers want this information? Why wouldn't policymakers want to make informed decisions? The biotechnology industry, along with many industrial agriculture sectors in the state are afraid that if the state requires seed manufacturers to report that total annual sales, the companies will pull their products from the state. Using this argument, they effectively removed the reporting requirement from the bill at the last minute. But we can put it back!!! Contact your legislators now and tell them a reporting requirement is not too much to ask.
Paradoxically, this argument about the burden for the company and the threat of their abandonment of the state was used when the Board of Pesticide Control was making regulations for Bt corn. Now that those regulations are in place, do we see the industry withdrawing from the state? No!! On the contrary, Monsanto has just submitted a new application to the BPC to register two additional Bt corn products. Are they threatened by the weak regulations put in place? NO!!! Should we let this threat prevent us from getting appropriate information for our policy decisions to be based on? NO!!! Tell your legislators to support the LD1650 with Rep Pratt's reporting amendment. Lets make informed decisions. Lets pass a reporting requirement.
What would LD 1650 do?
It will bring Maine's definitions of genetic engineering up to date with international law.
It will establish the right of Maine farmers to be heard in a court located in Maine if they are sued by a seed manufacturer for patent violation as long as they don't have a current contract with that company.
It prevents farmers from being sued for patent violation if they have only a minimal presence of engineered genetic material in their crops, or if they didn't intend for it to be there.
It directs the Maine Department of Agriculture to establish Best Management Practices for the use of Genetically Engineered Crops.
What would the Amendedt LD1650 do?
The House amended the bill to include a reporting requirement for the seed manufacturers to submit annual total potential acreage of all genetically engineered crops. These totals would be public information, but the individual numbers that the companies submit would be confidential.
Take action now to tell your legislators to support the minority report for LD 1650.
What do you get when you mix genetically modified corn and caddisflies? That's not the preamble to a joke.
Last
month, researchers funded by the National Science Foundation published
a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
providing the first documented evidence that toxins from genetically
modified corn may get into streams and harm insects that are an
essential food for fish.
The corn is known as BT corn, and it is
designed to manufacture a toxin that provides protection against
agricultural pests -- essentially, the plant that grows from BT corn
seed is a pesticide. The seed is manufactured by a number of large
biotechnology companies, and up until last summer, growing BT corn was
prohibited in Maine.
But a group of dairy farmers in the state
who wanted to grow the corn to feed their cows made the case that BT
corn can be grown more cheaply than conventional corn and thus offered
them competitive advantages -- advantages already enjoyed by farmers in
other states where the corn wasn't prohibited.
They pressed
their case with the state's Board of Pesticides Control, which was the
agency responsible for permitting the corn's planting because it is
considered a pesticide. Their case was met with resistance by the
state's growing number of organic dairy farmers, who asserted that
pollen drifting from the genetically modified corn would contaminate
organic corn used for feed, jeopardizing essential organic
certification for their operations.
The board made a Solomon's
judgment in July and declared it would permit BT corn to be planted in
the state -- but only under a set of strict rules to be devised by late
this year designed to protect organic farmers.
But while they were working on devising those rules this fall, the study about BT corn and caddisflies was released.
The
data in the study is worrisome enough that the board, which was due to
discuss the new rules later this week, should reverse course and
reconsider its permitting of BT corn use in Maine.
When the board
first considered the request for permission to plant BT corn, the major
issue of contention was the genetic contamination of organic corn by
genetically modified corn. That's because the EPA had previously
performed tests to determine the corn's effect on water resources --
and found no significant effects.
But those EPA tests were
problematic -- they didn't look at insects more closely related to the
ones the BT corn's pesticide targeted. So EPA's researchers potentially
missed an entire biological community that could be effected by the
corn. That's what the most recent study looked at. Where the EPA looked
at the crustacean species known as Daphnia, the more recent study
looked at caddisflies, one of the most important food sources for fish.
And what it found, according to the National Science Foundation,
was that the corn's "plant parts are washing into local streams." BT
corn pollen was also "being eaten by caddisflies." In laboratory tests,
"consumption of BT corn byproducts increased the mortality and reduced
the growth of caddisflies," and thus "the toxin in BT corn pollen and
detritus can affect species of insects other than the targeted pest."
Maine's
farmers are an important part of our state's economy, social fabric and
our landscape. Giving them more of a competitive edge is something we
should do -- if possible. But in this case, there's a competing value
that's potentially at risk if BT corn is planted and damages our water
resources. Maine's rivers and streams, the species that depend on them
and the fishing they provide are an equally important part of our
economy, social fabric and landscape. The introduction of a technology
that benefits one, but threatens another, must be carefully weighed.
At
the very least, the Board of Pesticides Control should revoke the BT
corn permits until they can be reconsidered in light of further study.
We
need to know the degree of toxicity posed by BT corn to caddisflies and
other aquatic insects. We need to know how long the toxins persist in
streams and how far the toxicity may travel once it gets into a stream.
The University of Maine's Mitchell Center for Environmental and
Watershed Research has strong staff expertise in stream ecology and
would be ideally suited to pursue this work.
In the meantime, BT corn should not be planted in Maine.
Come to the public hearing Friday Nov. 16 at 9:30 to at the Hampton Inn, Waterville.
Protect Maine Farmers is calling for supporters to Pack the Room for the Public Hearing.
In
order to go against the chemical and biotechnology industries, who
think they should have rights without responsibilities, the BPC needs
to know that there is strong public support for regulations on Bt corn,
and for assigning responsibilities to those companies and to the
farmers who want to grow Bt corn.
Please
come to the public hearing and tell the Board of Pesticides Control
(BPC): "With Rights Come Responsibilities." If you are unable to attend
Friday's hearing, click here to send written comments to the BPC. The BPC will be accepting public comments until Nov. 30. If you are coming, please come prepared to comment on the draft rules.
You are welcome to mention in your testimony your opposition to the
authorization for Bt corn, but please keep your comments focused on the
draft rules.
The new study on Bt corn's effects on aquatic insects
shows that there is much scientific work still to be done on Bt corn's
impacts on farmers, environment and human health. While this work
is being done, we should be as cautious as possible in letting Bt corn
loose in Maine.
For more information, please contact Logan Perkins at 207-692-2571 or
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 14 November 2007 )
Listen to Logan Perkins and CR Lawn Discuss Upcoming Bt Corn Hearing
In July Maine was the last state in the country to approve the use of Bt field corn.Now organic gardeners and others who don’t want
to grow genetically engineered corn are hoping some regulations can be
put in place to decrease the likelihood of cross-contamination.
The Board of Pesticide control will hold a public hearing on the issue
on Friday, November 16th, 2007 at 9:30a.m. at the Hampton Inn in
Waterville.
We talk with Logan Perkins of “Protect Maine
Farmers”, C.R. Lawn of Fedco Seeds, and Paul Schlein of the Maine Board
of Pesticide Control.
Significant Errors in the Comparison Between the Monarch Butterfly Study and the Caddisfly Study
Written by Doug Guiran-Sherman, Ph.D.
Monday, 12 November 2007
Union of Concerned Scientists Finds Significant Errors in Industry Comparison of Monarch Butterfly Study and the Caddisfly Study
by Doug Gurian-Sherman, Ph.D, Senior Scientist, Union of Concerned Scientists
Having been at
EPA at the time of the Monarch situation, I can attest to several
significant errors in the posting (Of butterflies and caddisflies — what’s a regulator to do?) from Doug Johnson, Maine Biotechnology Information Bureau/Greentree Communications/MaineBioBlog. The Losey study was a
very reasonable first step, as is the caddisfly study. In the case
of Monarch butterflies, the reasons that environmental impacts turned
out to be relatively small were several fold. First, there were
several types of Bt, one of which, Bt176, had high levels of the Cry
protein in its pollen - easily high enough to kill Monarchs at
amounts found on milkweed leaves (the normal food of Monarchs) in and
near corn fields. However, fortuitously (i.e. for reasons having
nothing to do with risk assessment), it was never grown on more than
about 5% of corn acres, and its registration was not renewed after
the Monarch studies. Second, the amounts of pollen found on
milkweeds in corn fields, even with the MON810 and Bt11 events that
are widely grown, can sometimes kill Monarchs. A follow-up paper by
several of the authors of the field studies found up to about 24%
Monarch mortality by pollen from these varieties at levels of pollen
in the field
(Dively et al., 2004, Environmental Entomology vol. 33, 1116-1125).
A primary reason why the actual levels of mortality are not higher is
that Monarch larvae happen not to be present when corn pollen is shed
in most of the U.S. They are only present in substantial numbers in
northern tier corn belt states like Iowa and Minnesota when pollen is
present. So the overall predicted mortality in that most recent
study is about 0.6% of the population in the Midwest, along with
small growth effects.
None of this
could have been predicted without the follow-up field studies. The
letter you posted makes it sound like critics of the Losey study knew
much of this before hand, but it was only after the studies were done
that this could be resolved. EPA erred when it registered Bt corn by
not realizing that milkweeds (and other insect host weeds) were
common in and near corn fields (they assumed that the heavy use of
herbicides in corn killed virtually all weeds), and that, given a
dearth of unmanaged habitat in the corn belt, these milkweeds are
important food sources in the Midwest. The phenology studies (the
timing of corn flowering and Monarch egg laying), were critical in
informing EPA about what was really going on.
As the Maine Board of Pesticides Controls plans for a public hearing on
rules to regulate the use of genetically modified Bt corn in the state,
new information about the effect of Bt corn on the environment is
emerging. A new study, funded by the National Science Foundation,
indicates that Bt corn may damage the ecology of streams draining Bt
corn fields in ways that have not been previously considered by
regulators. The study appears in the Oct. 8 edition of The Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences.
According to the independent study, toxins from Bt corn may travel long
distances in streams and may harm stream insects that serve as food for
fish. These results compound concerns about the ecological impacts of
Bt corn raised by previous studies showing that corn-grown toxins harm
beneficial insects living in the soil.
Licensed by the Environmental Protection Agency for use in 1996, Bt
corn is engineered to produce a toxin lethal to corn pests,
particularly the European corn borer. Bt corn now accounts for
approximately 35 percent of corn acreage in the U.S., and its use is
increasing.
In Maine, it will likely be used for the first time next year following
the July licensing of the product by the state Board of Pesticide
Control.
