In response to Dr. Mike Shintaku Plant Pathology Plant Virology of UH HILO letter to the Hawaii Tribune-Herald dated Sunday, August 11, 2013

Frustration, anger, fears based, desperation, primal defensive posturing these are the results of not addressing the concerns of everyday citizens, not answering their questions, and seeing that because they care for our mother earth and have questions, they are labeled as anti-farmer, antibusiness, anti-technology, anti-science… all this is further from the truth.

To question the policy of war doesn’t make one unpatriotic. To have demanded the laws of EIS for the State Super Ferry be enforced is not been anti-transportation or anti-business.

It is when the concerns, questions and suggestions go unanswered and the voices of a democratic society are been smothered by big money advertising and promotion, Doctors/scientists and employees who benefits from such industry and have a conflict of interest, pit members of our community against one another than the situation becomes desperate and thus resulting in desperate measures for desperate situations.

The anti-GMO movement is not about not supporting farmers on the contrary it is about supporting systems that not only benefits Farmers, but promotes the wellbeing of all life on this Island, and this world we live in. It is about the lack of transparency, the breach of trust, the loss of confidence for those whose who are tasked to protect us all. It is about the lack of an industry due diligence.

If the biotech industry does what they should and need to:

1) the EIS

2) the labeling

3) the application of precautionary principles

And come clean… they would not have such opposition.

Note… effects of asbestos, smoking, many cancers, PCB, don’t happen overnight or even a year at times, it depends on many things one of which is the amount of exposure rates, and so don’t insult my intelligence by saying “if you know someone eating papaya in Hilo, they are likely eating transgenic papaya and are likely pretty healthy.”